Jill 



fcTTRKS 



TO A 



Young Presbyterian. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

BX 1I7S 

©(rap Gojitjrig^t Ifo, 

Shelf ,.V\i-3. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




LETTERS 



YOUNG PRESBYTERIAN. 



J. A, WADDELL, D. D. 



20 1895 



m* aa 



Hicfymonb, Va.: 

Presbyterian Committee of Publication. 
1895. 




vi3 




Copyrighted by 

JAMES K. HAZEN, Secretary of Publication 

1895 



Printed by 

Whtttet & Sheppebson, 

Kichmond, Va. 



CONTENTS. 


Letter I., 




Page. 

5 


Letter II., 












11 


Letter III., . 












17 


Letter IV., . 












23 


Letter V., 












29 


Letter VI., 












35 


Letter VII. , . 












41 


Letter VIII. , 












47 


Letter IX., . 












53 


Letter X., . 












58 


Letter XL, . 












64 


Letter XII., . 












69 


Letter XIII. , 












74 


Letter XIV., 












80 


Letter XV., . 












86 


Letter XVI., 












92 


Letter XVII. , 












98 


Letter XVIIL, 












. 103 


Letter XIX. , 










109 


Letter XX., . 












. 115 



LETTER 

TO A 

YOUNG PRESBYTERIAN. 



LETTER I. 



Dear : I have long desired to do some 

special service to that class of Christians which 
you represent, and have concluded that the best 
way for me to accomplish it is to construct a 
series of letters to an individual in whom I feel 
a strong personal interest. For several rea- 
sons I judge you to be one to whom I may 
address my thoughts with freedom and confi- 
dence. Your piety, conscientiousness, love 
of truth, and habits of intelligent reading, en- 
courage me to believe that you will appreciate 
my efforts, and appropriate the benefits they 
are designed to convey. The mutual affection 
subsisting between us will at least ensure these 
letters against a heartless neglect. 

The general purpose of the undertaking is to 
confirm young Presbyterian readers in the Chris- 
tian faith as we understand it. You know that 
5 



6 Lettees to a Young Peesbyteeian. 

any one in our day who aims to be a true disciple 
of our Lord, must be a Christian after some 
particular type. It is impossible to float around 
as a Christian in general, with no association or 
connection with any denomination. Presby- 
terianism is Christianity in a certain form, and 
implies a judgment and preference for cer- 
tain distinctions. To confirm the youth of the 
church in this type of Christianity, is a faithful 
and consistent effort, of which no conscientious 
preacher of the faith need be ashamed. "We 
understand, of course, that certain limitations are 
necessary. We do not imagine that our judg- 
ment is infallible. We do not claim perfection 
for the Presbyterian system. But some planets 
are nearer than others to the sun, and some 
churches are more closely conformed to the 
Bible than others. Comparative proximity is 
our claim, and not an exclusive right to the 
entire firmament. 

If we believe that Presbyterianism is com- 
paratively the more scriptural system, the duty 
is obvious, to promote its growth with all our 
might. Such an effort may well give title to 
this initiatory letter. The subject is Confirma- 
tion, which we regard as an increase of stability 
in the faith of Jesus Christ, and not as a cere- 
mony of the imposition of hands. Lutherans 
and Episcopalians, at the Reformation, refused 



Letteks to a Young Presbyterian. 7 

to discontinue this rite of the Roman Catholic 
Church. With the former, the pastor is the 
administrator. In the latter church, none but 
a diocesan bishop is entrusted with the cere- 
mony. In both cases, however, it is assumed 
that Christ, the head of the church, requires 
such a ceremony, whilst the other great Pro- 
testant churches hold that the Scriptures give 
no warrant for such an observance. 

Here, then, at the beginning, a Presbyterian 
principle requires attention, because, in omit- 
ting the rite of Confirmation, we are regarded 
by many as being less Christian in our practice 
than others. There are thousands of young 
people who are taught to find fault with Pres- 
byterianism for not doing what they imagine to 
be one of the plainest duties in the Christian 
life. We stand at a great disadvantage with 
people who are not well versed in the Scrip- 
tures. 

The fact is, that this rite has no foundation 
in the word of God. No one whose religion is 
learned at that source would ever dream of 
such a performance. The expression,] " con- 
firming the churches," appears in the New 
Testament, but the Lutheran pastor, or the 
Anglican bishop, is not expected to confirm a 
church when he performs the ceremony. He 
confirms a class, and not a church, and the 



8 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

class consists of young persons who have been 
examined in church doctrine. Now, Presby- 
terians understand, by confirmation of churches, 
such preaching and exhortation as, when ad- 
dressed to the body of believers in a particular 
place, shall be calculated to strengthen their 
faith. The word translated confirm is familiar 
to Greek scholars, and known to convey the 
idea of additional stability, and not that of an 
imposition of hands. 

The Presbyterian principle to which I refer 
is this: That no positive ceremony is of di- 
vine authority in the church which is not dis- 
tinctly required in the Scriptures. At the 
Reformation in England, this was the point 
of controversy that was most warmly contested 
between the court and the Puritans. The lat- 
ter, who were generally Presbyterians, opposed 
the court in its claim of supremacy in the na- 
tional church, especially as to its right to im- 
pose certain ceremonies upon the worshiper 
contrary to his conscience. The ceremonies 
were of popish origin in their judgment, and 
they appealed from the royal prerogative to 
the Bible. 

One of these ceremonies to which objection 
was made, was that of manual confirmation. 
Presbyterians could not admit the claim of 
human authority, either in church or state, to 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 9 

impose upon the worshiper any observance in 
religion which is not taught or clearly implied 
in the word of God. In England, the claim 
was to force conformity to the rite of Confirma- 
tion at the hands of a diocesan bishop, by 
virtue of authority residing in the church to 
decree rites and ceremonies. The Roman 
Catholic Church was the original claimant, and 
Protestantism in all other countries was a pro- 
test against it. But in England the aim of 
court and church was simply to transfer this 
prerogative from one hierarchy to another. 
They openly denied the right of the worship- 
ers to the exercise of conscience in the mat- 
ter. Hence the announcement by the Puritans 
of this great principle, that Christian people 
may enjoy a certain liberty limited by the 
Scriptures, but no human authority may im- 
pose upon them any rite or ceremony not au- 
thorized in the word of God. 

The imposition of hands by a pastor, as a 
preferred method of admission of regenerate 
people to the full membership of a church, if 
unincumbered with any false doctrine, may be 
a harmless proceeding, for it may be a mere 
mode of prayer in behalf of the recipient. But 
Presbyterians cannot see any call for such a 
ceremony, in the absence of any intimation in 
Scripture in its favor. It is deemed most pru- 



10 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

dent to ignore it altogether, that our protest 
may be emphasized against certain errors now 
attached to it. We are Protestants, and con- 
tinue to protest against the Romish idea that 
"confirming the churches" refers to a cere- 
mony, and that the hands of a diocesan bishop 
are a channel of the Holy Ghost. Our protest 
will be more fully explained in future letters. 
For the present, allow me to urge attention 
to the principle referred to. Deeply thankful 
shall I be if my feeble lines shall tend to con- 
firm the faith of any of my young readers in 
the great spiritual doctrines of the gospel, as 
distinguished from all rites which human in- 
vention has devised to magnify the importance 
of the priestly office, and fasten a princely or- 
der over the church of God. 



LETTER II. 



Dear : In my first letter I introduced 

the subject of "rites and ceremonies" as one of 
the main issues in the English Reformation. 
The court insisted upon retaining a number of 
Roman Catholic institutions, which the Puri- 
tans and most other Protestants opposed, on 
the ground that neither the clergy nor the gov- 
ernment had authority from Christ to impose 
observances not authorized in the Scriptures, 
and also because some of these ceremonies 
were calculated to lead the people into serious 
error. Intelligent Christians of our day, and 
in this free land, are astonished to see so many 
young persons, in profound ignorance of the 
nature and object of the Reformation, sub- 
scribing to the tyrannical acts of Henry VIII. 
and Elizabeth, by which they forced their sub- 
jects to retain the superstitious ceremonies of 
the papal church, nearly all of which the rest 
of the Protestant world had rejected. 

As confirmation is my object, I desire to 
confirm those of your ago in certain lessons of 
the historical past, ignorance of which is con- 
stantly increasing to a mortifying extent. We 
11 



12 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

sometimes see young Presbyterians, under the 
social influence of others as ignorant as them- 
selves, fascinated by these papal ornaments, 
and virtually assenting to the preposterous idea 
that the Puritans were wrong, and the royal 
tyrants of England right. Say what they will, 
such persons are taking hack the protest re- 
corded by the fathers in an earlier age against 
spiritual despotism and priestly pretensions. 
By action, which speaks louder than words, 
they publicly condemn the Puritans, Presbyte- 
rians, and continental Reformers for contend- 
ing so earnestly in behalf of the rights of con- 
science and the supremacy of the Scriptures. 
Consciously or not, they adopt for themselves 
and their posterity the pernicious doctrine that 
the church is authorized by Christ to invent 
and impose rites and ceremonies at discretion, 
even to the subversion of those which he and 
his apostles used and sanctioned. 

No honest reader of the New Testament can 
fail to see that the Jewish temple and priest- 
hood, with all the splendid and attractive in- 
stitutions of the ceremonial law, gave place, 
after the ascension of Christ, to a system marked 
by simplicity, and adapted to popular use. It 
requires a strange perverseness, in a people 
blessed with an open Bible, to abandon the 
simplicity which the Holy Ghost himself sub- 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 13 

stituted, on purpose, for the elaborate symbol- 
ism of the ancient ritual, and endeavor to 
return again to the showy usages of the priest- 
hood and the temple. Eomanism is a revolt 
against the studied simplicity of the gospel. 
It proclaims to the world that the simple or- 
ganization under the lowly apostles, and the 
plain worship and service of the New Testa- 
ment church, are unsatisfactory and insufficient. 
It aims to undo the revolution accomplished 
by the cross, and to establish a splendid hier- 
archy and a seductive worship rivaling that of 
the Jews. The English court and priesthood, 
in opposition to all other Protestants, insisted 
that the papacy was to a great extent right in 
this design, and condemned our fathers for 
too strict an adherence to the Scriptures. 

I beg leave to maintain that the sons of the 
Reformers have no right to go back upon the 
New Testament. There is a principle at stake 
which a Christian ought not to ignore. And 
yet we see it trampled under foot by young 
people every day. For want of intelligence, 
and, as they imagine, in the exercise of Ameri- 
can freedom, they lay aside all restraints and 
go back to the ideas of Henry VIII. They 
refuse to inform themselves, and, under influ- 
ences very different from the Scriptures, they 
virtually subscribe to the belief that a strict 



14 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

regard for Bible doctrine and apostolical usage 
was the error and folly of the Puritan Re- 
formers ! 

Two pleas are employed in defence of this 
overthrow of the New Testament system. One 
is, that the church in her wisdom improved 
upon the original model just after the days of 
the apostles, and the improvements have come 
down by tradition. The other is, that expedi- 
ency alone justifies the church in changing her 
forms from age to age. The idea that sufficient 
inspiration remained in force after the apos- 
tles to enable the priesthood of the first one or 
two centuries to revolutionize the Christian 
organism, and then bind future generations to 
an iron system, is worthy of a place among the 
grossest absurdities ever propounded. It is 
too puerile to be noticed. It claims our rev- 
erence for a system because it is old. It shuts 
its eyes to the fact that it was once an innova- 
tion, superseding the system of the apostles. 
If there was divine sanction for radical changes 
in the second century, the apostolical succes- 
sion was fatally broken by its own premises. 
The papal theory, more rationally, claims in- 
spiration and infallibility at every stage, and 
can innovate continually. 

The appeal to expediency as an endowment 
of the church, enabling her to change and 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 15 

diversify her methods, may be admitted as 
applicable to questions upon which the Bible 
throws no light. The church exercises such 
discretion every day. But a proper reverence 
for the apostolical institutions seems to require 
us to observe them with the highest possible 
respect. The question rises for an answer 
whenever we consider the organization of mod- 
ern congregations, how it comes that our de- 
nomination alone can claim likeness to the 
apostolical churches? In no other denomina- 
tion do we find churches placed under the 
episcopal oversight of a body of teaching and 
ruling elders, and served in secular matters by 
deacons. Observe, if you please, the large 
number of congregations in your city, and ask 
yourself why nearly all of them are managed 
in a way conspicuously different from those 
planted by Paul. It is evident that these vari- 
ous sects, guided blindly by tradition, or gov- 
erned by a temporary expediency, have actually 
foisted upon our modern Christianity as great 
a diversity as possible. There is no end to 
the unscriptural offices and titles employed in 
their peculiar regulations. Each body seems 
determined to differ, and all more or less de- 
part from the most ancient pattern found in 
the New Testament. 

I close this letter with emphasis upon the 



16 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

great principle which, our young people ought 
to know and defend as a necessary safeguard 
of Christianity. The church of Christ suffers 
incalculably in its spiritual interests by the 
general proclivity of its members to consult 
their own pleasure in administering its affairs, 
and to treat the Bible as far less imperative 
than taste or utility. Neither Henry VIIL, nor 
the reverend clergy, nor the people in congre- 
gation assembled, should be allowed to put 
aside the inspired Scriptures, and frame rules 
and methods of government and worship in 
conflict with those which the apostles clearly 
instituted. 



LETTER III. 



Dear : Allow me, through you, to re- 
mind other young readers that the Presbyterian 
Church was one of the three original types 
which the Keformation presented. Congre- 
gationalists, Baptists, Methodists are growths of 
a later date, from germs then considered insig- 
nificant. The original three were expressions 
of different degrees of intensity. The Calvinists 
aimed at a reformation more thorough than 
that of Luther ; and the English court insisted 
upon still greater conformity to Rome. Luther- 
anism was adopted by the Germans and Scan- 
dinavians. Calvinism took root chiefly in 
Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, and 
Scotland. England remained alone with her 
national system determined by sovereign au- 
thority. But the English Puritans inclined to 
the strict opinions of the Calvinists, on the 
ground of their agreement with Scripture. 
Americans are thus brought, by historical con- 
siderations, to choose between Calvinism and 
the scheme of English monarchs shaping the 
Reformation according to their arbitrary will. 
Other considerations, of course, have operated 
2 17 



18 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

so as to form the other large denominations. 
But, not unfrequently, the ecclesiastical associa- 
tions of the young are very much determined by 
the inclination of the mind to one or the other 
of the two types — Calvinism or Anglicanism. 

The issue depends upon two powerful forces, 
personal influence and education. The ad- 
vantage is largely on the side of the Anglicans, 
because we all speak and read the English 
language, which is full of Anglican terms and 
ideas. By virtue of the union between church 
and state, the aristocratic element, with its 
wealth and leisure, has given in English litera- 
ture so much prominence to the English type of 
religion, that, in many minds, all other types are 
considered comparatively vulgar. This is an 
inherited infirmity which many have overcome. 
But many others grow up under its influence, 
even in the United States, and live and die 
with the impression that the English religion is 
necessarily the best, not because it is the most 
scriptural, but because it is old, ceremonious, 
and acceptable to polite society. The English 
people are insular, and notoriously arrogant 
towards foreigners. The spirit of the nation, 
and that of the church, have reacted upon each 
other for centuries, and too often the result is 
an attitude of superiority towards other nations 
and sects. 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 19 

Now suppose two young persons of the same 
or different sexes to become intimate, one- of 
whom has been reared somewhat in this way, 
and the other taught from infancy to derive 
religious impressions chiefly from the Bible, 
and to respect true piety in all churches. The 
preponderance of the Anglican personality will 
manifest itself with certainty. The influence 
in that direction is apt to be positive and con- 
stant. The resistance is generally feeble, be- 
cause an unprejudiced mind respects very posi- 
tive convictions, even when declining to adopt 
them. Too many young Protestants, prepared 
as victims for this sacrifice by being trained 
to charity without being warned against error, 
yield to the more positive urgency of others, 
and go back half-way to Eome without realiz- 
ing what they do. 

The only safeguard is in education in the 
principles of the Reformation, and such read- 
ing as shall protect the mind from English 
narrowness. Young Presbyterians ought to 
know in time that the Anglican type of re- 
ligion is confined to a part only of the British 
people, and, in its relations to others, is dis- 
tinctly insular and peculiar. An immense ma- 
jority of Protestants serve God on other lines, 
and are in turn discredited by this minority, 
which is intensely British and exclusive. 



20 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

Young* readers who know these facts, and are 
posted in regard to the teaching of the Scrip- 
tures, may, if decidedly pious and conscien- 
tious, successfully stand their ground against 
the allurements to which they are exposed. 
But no others can. Our admission, which we 
cannot refuse, that salvation is the portion of 
all God's children, in the Anglican communion 
as well as our own, seems to many a sufficient 
justification of all the errors of that system. 
The idea of superficial thinkers is, that if sev- 
eral vessels are starting on a voyage, and the 
safety of some is questioned, it cannot be un- 
wise to take passage upon one that is not sus- 
pected. Put your money in the bank in which 
other banks confide ! 

This would be fine reasoning, if the church 
were the Saviour. But, according to the Scrip- 
tures, the church is the party saved, and not 
the Saviour of mankind. Here is one of the 
Romish errors against which we must protest. 
"Baptism saves us," we know, but not external 
baptism, which is "a washing away of the filth 
of the flesh." Spiritual baptism saves by mak- 
ing us Christians, not churchmen, and enrolling 
us in the family of God. We make our voyage, 
therefore, in the arms of Christ, and not upon 
the deck of a vessel commissioned by Great 
Britain. (See 1 Peter iii. 21.) The superficial 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 21 

mind is in need of instruction at this point ; for 
the error, if not fatal, is dangerous, that im- 
agines that communion with a church, however 
orthodox, is salvation. We should know, on 
the contrary, that the scriptural order is, salva- 
tion first, and enrolment afterwards. 

But the force of this specious claim is ever 
at work in our American communities. Its 
victims are many. It breaks up our families. 
It unsettles our convictions. It saddens our 
hearts, through alienations which cannot be 
healed, but might be prevented. Prevention is 
the work of education in church history and 
the Scriptures^ both of which sources of infor- 
mation are sadly ignored by the parties in 
question. There is little probability that any 
young person, who is careful to lay up a mod- 
erate degree of intelligence concerning the 
apostolic churches and the Eeformation, will 
dare to urge upon a friend the exclusive pre- 
tensions of the Anglican system, or, on the 
other hand, wound the hearts of parents and 
kindred by inconsiderate desertion to the ranks 
of that body. 

We like to see a little feeling on the subject, 
at least sufficient to indicate some decent know- 
ledge of the past. I revere the memory of Arch- 
bishop Leighton as a man of saintly spirit. But 
his father was a Puritan, whose ears were bru- 



22 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

tally cropped by bigoted persecutors. I find it 
hard to forget that the son was willing to re- 
ceive an ecclesiastical preferment at the hands 
of the brutal party that had mutilated his own 
parent in the name of religion. Forgiveness 
is Christ-like at all times, but insensibility is 
not necessary, and the children of the Presby- 
terian sufferers of a former age, who quietly 
depart and join the ranks of the rival body that 
oppressed their forefathers, can only escape 
the imputation of a want of feeling by plead- 
ing ignorance of the blood that flows in their 



LETTER IV. 



Dear : My suggestion that some sensi- 
bility on the subject of persecution is creditable, 
must not be misunderstood. So good, a man as 
Leighton would never have concealed his ab- 
horrence for cruelty to his own father, had he 
not made ''passive obedience" a part of his 
religion. Many other pious divines of his day 
took the same view. The feeling commended 
is not a vindictive spirit, but a loathing aver- 
sion for all those atrocities which were formerly 
visited by Christian rulers and their spiritual 
advisers upon the lowly saints of God. In our 
day no one believes in "passive obedience," 
and no well-informed gentleman or lady can 
remember the suffering of their ancestors for 
conscience' sake, and for the love of the Bible, 
without the sentiment to which I refer — a cer- 
tain feeling of abhorrence at the names of the 
brutal men who perpetrated such deeds. 

Remember this great fact, that although the 
Puritans in England, the Reformers in Scot- 
land, and the Huguenots in France, when 
opportunity offered, sometimes retaliated for 
the severities inflicted upon them, neither the 
23 



24 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

English nor the Scotch Protestants, who en- 
dured so much persecution under the Tudors 
and the Stuarts, are chargeable with bloody 
persecution in return. It is impossible for 
churchmen to recriminate to any considerable 
extent for the butcheries of Claverhouse, or 
the judicial barbarities of Jeffries, for which 
not only the tyrants on the throne were respon- 
sible, but the "passive-obedience" divines of 
the Church of England. 

But I beg you to suppress all prejudice to- 
wards cotemporaries who may abhor such 
cruelties as profoundly as ourselves. I can 
understand how a modern Christian may dis- 
approve of the policy of English despots, and 
yet adhere to that type of religion which is 
associated with it. I suppose an honest man 
may be a good republican democrat in the 
United States, and yet cleave to the religion 
of his English fathers as a happy compromise 
between Protestantism and Romanism. Pres- 
byterianism does not condemn Anglicanism in 
toto. It protests against its errors, without 
ceasing to respect it as a branch of the church 
of God. Anglicanism, on the other hand, does 
not so respect the Presbyterian system. All 
our young people ought to understand these 
relations of the two communions. My aim is 
to show that, of the two, the Presbyterian posi- 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 25 

tion is, if not perfect, at least more scriptural, 
more charitable, more pleasing to God. The 
piety of individuals is not in question. I refer 
on]y to the systems. It is a duty, all around, to 
serve God in a communion that comes nearest 
to that type of Christianity which an honest 
inquiry can trace to the principles laid down 
for us all by the Spirit of God. 

It is not uncommon for an unfair advantage 
to be taken of the greater charity of our posi- 
tion. It being admitted that the Presbyterian 
party is less pretentious and exclusive, the 
other party turns aiound and urges this fact 
as a plea in its own favor. The substance is : 
"Your principles do not forbid your accept- 
ance of our system as reconcilable with the 
fundamentals of Christianity. Our principles 
compel us to reject your system. Now, there- 
fore, as we are commanded to be one, you are 
the party to yield and surrender." We call 
this an unfair turn for an exclusive party to 
take. It is the device of oriental commerce, in 
which the Turkish tradesman puts an outrage- 
ous price upon his commodity, expecting to 
overcome the purchaser by the very extrava- 
gance of his terms. The Romanist can just 
as well demand surrender on the part of the 
high-church Briton, on the ground that he is 
still more arrogant and tenacious. 



26 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

The assumption that the principle of the 
Anglican is fundamental, and that of the Pres- 
byterian less sacred, must be sustained or 
abandoned. It is, in fact, a mere shadow. Our 
brethren of that faith, however high, do not 
regard it as a condition of salvation. The Ro- 
manists themselves, from whom they derived 
it, recoil at its enormity. It is simply the 
asking-price put by the Turk on his merchan- 
dise. But if it is not essential to salvation, it 
is difficult to see its fundamental character. If 
we could suppose the two principles about 
equally scriptural, their sacred importance 
would also be equal, and no one could attri- 
bute to either a marked superiority. The only 
difference conceivable would depend upon the 
force of asseveration employed. 

That they are not equal will be shown here- 
after. All I now contend for is, that the effort 
made by Anglicans to drive an advantageous 
bargain with ecclesiastical competitors, by 
pleading the greater importance of the theory 
of their system, breaks down when they con- 
fess that the Presbyterian or Methodist road 
to heaven is not impassable by reason of the 
absence of sacerdotal grace. It is well known 
that this theory represents the church of Jesus 
Christ as limited by the peculiar institution 
which its advocates so warmly idolize. There 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 27 

is no church where the threefold clerical ladder 
inherited from Rome is not found. It seems, 
therefore, to follow that a vast majority of 
Christians in the Protestant sense are camped 
outside of the walls of the true church. The 
one shepherd finds his one flock divided very 
unequally, and a very insignificant number of 
his sheep are located as he desires. The sin 
of schism is imputed to the mass of the disci- 
ples by the remnant that is supposed to occupy 
the true fold. All this is so contrary to truth 
that common sense is shocked at the simple 
statement. 

The Redeemer is the king of all his people. 
It is conceded that the believers in various de- 
nominations are his subjects. If we inquire 
concerning the extent of a temporal kingdom, 
nothing is more absurd than to point to a 
small territory containing a remnant of its 
people. The map of Germany is a designa- 
tion of the space inhabited by the subjects of 
the emperor. No geographer would exclude 
three-fourths of the population. It is grossly 
absurd to limit the church to a narrow, insular 
organization, outside of which an overwhelming 
majority of the faithful are known to be. Con- 
sistency clearly requires those who maintain 
this exclusive theory, to go back to their old 
assumption, that the promises of God belong 



28 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

to themselves alone. But the conscience of 
the Anglican church can no longer bear the 
strain of a haughty monopoly of salvation. 
Its enlightened and pious membership will not 
tolerate a faith as arbitrary and exclusive as 
that of Islam. The only remaining alternative 
is to abandon a position that is no longer tena- 
ble, and restore the fellowship that Christ re- 
quires of his sincere disciples. 



LETTER V. 



Dear : I propose to settle principles 

before entering further upon particular institu- 
tions. I therefore recur to that great principle 
upon which all argument on these church ques- 
tions depends. We must necessarily entertain 
the preliminary inquiry, how far the Bible 
should be our guide. Calvinism is tenacious 
of the doctrine that " all Scripture is given by 
inspiration of God, and is profitable for doc- 
trine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction 
in righteousness; that the man of God may 
be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good 
works." This seems to be comprehensive. The 
Puritans of the English Eeformation rightly 
judged that, in reconstructing the church on a 
Protestant basis, supreme regard should be 
paid to the instruction, directly or indirectly 
conveyed by the inspired word, and that rites 
and ceremonies should accord as far as possi- 
ble with the precepts and examples which it 
contains. For example, the sign of the cross 
in baptism, and the kneeling posture in receiv- 
ing the elements in the Lord's Supper, were 
both opposed by them, not only as unwar- 



30 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

ranted by the Bible, but as tending to super- 
stition. They contended that the former was 
an addition to the sacrament of baptism which 
no king or hierarchy had any right to impose, 
and that the latter was a presumptuous im- 
provement upon the original mode of com- 
munion, improperly forced upon the conscience. 
The question in our day is this : Has the church 
any right to require all Christians to receive 
either sacrament in a form which Christ does 
not prescribe ? The Anglican affirms, and the 
Presbyterian denies. It is plain that the au- 
thority here claimed justifies not only the sign 
of the cross, but other superstitious observances 
of the papists in baptism. And if communi- 
cants may be forced to kneel, contrary to the 
primitive institution, they may also be deprived 
of the cup. 

There is no sense whatever in giving the 
Scriptures to the laymen of the church as the 
charter of their liberties, and in vesting the 
church with power to decree rites and cere- 
monies at will. It is usurpation when such 
power is exercised over the conscience of the 
individual by changes or additions that depart 
from the purposed simplicity of scriptural in- 
stitutions. The principle for which we con- 
tend is of inestimable importance. If we are 
not to follow as far as we can the guidance of 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 31 

the Bible, there is no end to the innovations 
that authority or popular taste may introduce. 
The Church of Eome is a warning to all Chris- 
tians. It has so subverted the simplicity of 
the apostles that the New Testament origin of 
its worship is completely obliterated. 

The history of the Komish apostasy is a his- 
tory of wilful and daring departures from the 
apostolical type of Christianity. All readers 
of the New Testament are of course aware of 
the fact that the one is a contrast to the other. 
It is therefore amazing that a Protestant church, 
like that of England, should have sanctioned 
the spirit of Rome by deliberately adopting so 
many of her inventions. The imitation was so 
glaring that Anglicanism is chargeable with 
some degree of that disregard for the Scrip- 
tures by which Rome is characterized. In ar- 
bitrarily decreeing uniformity of worship, and 
attempting to force certain unscriptural cere- 
monies upon tender consciences, she assumed 
unwarranted authority, and committed herself 
to that great error which has distracted Pro- 
testant Christendom ever since. She knows 
that the Lord's Supper was first administered 
to the disciples in a reclining, not a kneeling, 
posture, and yet she commands her communi- 
cants to receive it kneeling, as if her judgment 
were superior to that of Christ, and for the pur- 



32 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

pose of retaining in her rubric a doctrinal error 
of the Romish Church. 

The Christian church is suffering now most 
deplorably from the evils that result from this 
unfaithfulness to the word of God. As Pilate 
and Herod and the Jews were united against 
Jesus, so Romanism, Ritualism, and Rationalism 
are co-operating at the present hour against the 
influence of the written word, and discrediting 
its authority. Presbyterians and other faithful 
Protestants protest in vain. A considerable 
evangelical party in the English Church strug- 
gles against the powerful currents that run to- 
wards Rome or skepticism, with declining effect. 
At the bottom of all the trouble lies the origi- 
nal mistake of the English reformers in con- 
senting to gratify their secular allies on the 
throne and at the court, and refusing the coun- 
sel of all other Protestants. 

The result is, that the plain simplicity of the 
apostolical church is abandoned for a system 
of worship and government devised by men to 
conform it to her Anglican environment, and 
the pure gospel of the New Testament is parted, 
like the raiment of the dying Christ, between 
the ritualists and the critics. 

It ought to be known to our young people 
that, in the ecclesiastical world, the Presby- 
terian Church, which some people would per- 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 33 

suade thein is too strict and too plain, occupies, 
with many other loyal Christians, the front line 
of defence against this assault of the allied 
forces upon the authority of the inspired word. 
Many saints in the Anglican Church appreciate 
our earnest contention for a principle unwisely 
sacrificed by their fathers. No man can deny 
the plain simplicity of the original churches. 
The question is, shall we forsake this example 
so clearly indicated by inspired pens, and coun- 
tenance experiments and innovations without 
end, in order to meet the many demands of 
human nature ? Shall we substitute an elabor- 
ate ornamentation for this characteristic of the 
gospel, and, using a rationalistic disregard for 
the teaching of the Scriptures as the basis of 
our experiments, follow the example of Rome, 
by dressing up Christianity in a costume which 
misleads one class into superstition, and sug- 
gests mockery to another? You will not un- 
derstand me as condemning particular postures 
as wrong in themselves. Kneeling at com- 
munion, and facing the East, would be inno- 
cent acts, if not associated with error and 
superstition. What I mean is, that deviations 
from the scriptural modes, introduced as im- 
provements by ecclesiastical usurpation, for a 
doctrinal purpose, are unjustifiable. The Lord's 
Supper was instituted at a passover table after 
3 



34 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

the manner of a meal. Kneeling at meals is 
without precedent. The change was made to 
indicate "the real presence." The Church of 
England retained the innovation, because it 
was unwilling to renounce the doctrinal views 
which it suggests. And this was done in dis- 
regard of the scruples of many of her members. 



LETTER VI. 



Dear : Some of the Puritans, in the 

ardor of controversy, undoubtedly carried mat- 
ters to extremes. But on the main question 
of respect for the institutions and methods of 
the apostles, as we learn them from the New 
Testament, I must defend them. The proper 
aim of an honest reformation is to return to 
the originals as far as possible. Is not this a 
plain and undeniable proposition? The Cal- 
vinists sought to restore the simple worship of 
the New Testament churches, in which no priest- 
hood, no altar, no sacrifices for propitiation are 
seen. They were opposed to the sign of the cross, 
easterly position, ceremonial confirmation, and 
kneeling in the eucharist, as vehicles of that 
superstitious tendency which had carried away 
the Church of Eome so far from the gospel 
type. The justice of their opposition depends 
upon the inquiry whether the churches founded 
by the apostles were founded on a permanent 
or provisional basis. Presbyterianism affirms 
the former, Anglicanism the latter. 

In our own day the spirit of improvement 
35 



36 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

upon the usages of apostolical times is very 
active in the church generally. Certain par- 
ties are exacting and domineering in behalf 
of changes they propose, and will not listen 
with respect when it is suggested that Christ 
or Paul did this or said that. We are reminded 
that they lived in comparatively unenlightened 
times, and their customs and opinions were 
adapted to an environment that has long passed 
away. Paul inculcated " shamefacedness and 
sobriety " on Christian women, and wrote, under 
inspiration, "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor 
to usurp authority over the man, but to be in 
silence." The spirit of this age actually laughs 
this reference to scorn, and, sustained by the 
applause of the multitude, puts woman forward 
in worldly professions, and exalts her to a place 
of teacher and ruler in the church. 

A right to reverse the precepts and prece- 
dents of the Holy Scriptures was maintained 
by the corrupted church in the dark ages, then 
sanctioned by the ruling powers in the Church 
of England, and is now claimed in the name of 
liberty by large sections of various denomina- 
tions. On this vital question, Presbyterians are 
confronted by Komanism, Ritualism, and Liber- 
alism — by papists, churchmen, and hosts of 
others in different sects — all contending, on 
different grounds, against the authority of the 



Letteks to a Young Presbyterian. 37 

sacred text. And yet there are few private 
Christians who begin to realize the gravity of 
the issue, or feel a proper interest in our de- 
fence of the Bible. 

The modes in which religious services were 
conducted in apostolic times may not all be 
obligatory, but departures from them cannot be 
vindicated which sacrifice any of their intended 
significance. For example, if our Baptist 
brethren are right in supposing that a burial is 
the design of the rite of baptism, there can be 
no excuse for using any substitute for immer- 
sion. Their strongest argument is drawn from 
Paul's language, so construed, in his epistles to 
the Romans and Colossians. If, on the other 
hand, the "pouring out" of the Spirit from 
above is to be represented in the sacrament, 
the introduction of immersion, to signify an- 
other idea, was a change that cannot be ex- 
cused. The same is true in reference to all the 
significant observances of which we read in the 
Book of Acts. Peter rebuked Cornelius for 
paying him homage as if divine, and John re- 
ceived an angel's rebuke for a similar honor to 
him in the Book of Revelation. Such facts de- 
termine important doctrine, if we are careful to 
heed them. They condemn most clearly the 
worship of saints, which Rome inculcates. The 
pious dead in heaven are still human creatures, 



38 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

removed from sight and communication with 
us. What space intervenes between us and 
them we know not. Eome teaches her sub- 
jects to pay them divine honor, ask them 
for divine grace, as if the Scriptures con- 
tained no such prohibitions. If the Bible 
may be "set aside at will, as her oracles and 
many Protestants hold, the worship of Peter 
and Mary can be easily defended by formal 
argument. Recurring to these facts, I feel war- 
ranted in imputing to Mary, and Peter, and the 
angels of God, the remonstrance made to John 
in the vision : " See thou do it not, for I am 
thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren, the pro- 
phets, and of them which keep the sayings of 
this book : worship God." 

Such is the testimony of the Bible against 
idolatry ; and yet Borne, with loud professions 
on her lips of respect for the word of God, 
treats its solemn warnings with open contempt, 
and puts into the mouths of her worshipers 
prayer and praise of such a character that they 
express and imply an ascription to Mary and 
others of the dead of the highest divine attri- 
butes. Even more, they represent God the Son 
as stern and unrelenting, and direct the wor- 
shiper to appeal to Mary as the more com- 
passionate of the two. 

This impiety, inculcated by the Church of 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 39 

Borne, belongs to her assumed right to mould 
Christianity according to her will. But Angli- 
canism deliberately forced upon its subjects a 
number of the innovations of this apostate 
hierarchy, as improvements upon the primi- 
tive simplicity of the church. We ought, 
whilst protesting, to protest against the cere- 
monies that continue to express in Protestant 
churches distaste for the style of worship 
which the primitive saints maintained. For 
the fact that neither the Acts nor the Epis- 
tles indicate an elaborate and ornamental rou- 
tine in the worship of that day, is strong 
evidence that such a service as the English 
prayer-book prescribes was unknown to the 
original church. 

It is a fair inference from this absence of 
allusions to aesthetic appliances in the primi- 
tive worship, that the apostles intentionally 
refrained from any return to the attractive 
devices of the temple worship of the Jews. 
The whole symbolical system introduced by 
Moses was abolished by the gospel. Two 
sacramental rites were provided, of the simplest 
character possible. No ornamental device ad- 
heres to either of them to impress the out- 
ward senses. The gospel in its simple forms 
appeals to the thoughts and affections of the 
worshiper, and does not seek to minister to 



40 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

devotion by the use of the -fine arts, which are 
necessarily unavailable for humanity in its 
ordinary conditions. The church is expected 
to follow her Lord, not in gorgeous robes, or 
princely state, but in a lowly form correspond- 
ing to his humiliation. 



LETTER VII. 



Dear : There was obvious reason for 

the preference displayed by the Tudors, and 
the Stuarts, and their abettors in the church, 
for a ceremonious and stately worship. Pa- 
geantry is a matter of immense importance in 
a government of which subordination and ser- 
vility are the main pillars. The reformed re- 
ligion could not be allowed to introduce repub- 
lican plainness where it might interfere with 
the proper gradation of society. The simple 
style implied in the New Testament was 
not suited to people of rank, much less to 
royal worshipers. James I. put the senti- 
ment of the court in his times in expressive 
words, when he said that Presbyterianism was 
a religion "not fit for a gentleman." As gen- 
tlemen were defined by his class at that day, it 
certainly was not. It could not find in its di- 
vine charter any warrant for an elaborate cere- 
monial in its worship, and understood that the 
gospel was expected to "make the last first 
and the first last." If caste and class were to 
continue, the principle of classification would 
be entirely new. 

41 



42 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

The English dynasties, before the Revolution 
of 1688, hedged themselves about with pomp 
and circumstance. Elizabeth exacted the most 
humiliating servility. Of course court influ- 
ence, being allowed to shape the external form 
of the church, and not restrained by reverence 
for the Scriptures, sought to adapt it to the 
gradation of society. Artificial arrangements 
were necessary, and many rules of observance 
and etiquette were the consequence. Cere- 
moniousness in the church was the natural ad- 
junct of the subordination required in an abso- 
lute monarchy. A religion fit for a king must 
be hedged with heraldry, and suggest servility. 
The Romish hierarchy, substituting the king 
for the pope, must be retained to a consid- 
erable extent in England, in order to impart 
to distinctions of rank the sanction of re- 
ligion. 

The spirit of the gospel counted for very 
little in the eyes of parties who were so deeply 
interested in maintaining their own ascendancy. 
Deeming the threefold order of the clergy, upon 
which Rome insisted, essential to royalty and 
the peerage, they contended for it with undy- 
ing tenacity. From that day to this the same 
three orders have been treated as an original 
principle in the church of Christ, necessary to 
its valid organization, and, no matter what may 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 43 

be the spirit or the letter of the Scriptures, 
other parties plead them in vain. A stubborn 
aristocracy does not yield to such feeble argu- 
ments as Bible texts. Such authorities as Luke 
xxii. 25, 26, fall like rain upon a rock : " The kings 
of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them ; 
and they that exercise authority upon them are 
called benefactors. But ye shall not be so : but 
he that is greatest among you, let him be as 
the younger; and he that is chief, as he that 
doth serve." 

These words were spiritual, of course, and 
may not be pushed to an extreme. But it is 
impossible to reconcile the Bomish or the An^ 
glican hierarchy with them. This system of 
subordination, in rank as well as office, is di- 
rectly in conflict with the spirit of Christ, who 
exemplified it by rendering menial service to 
his disciples. I say nothing at present about 
the letter of the word. The spirit of the gos- 
pel is condescension. It forbids the very thing 
which a typical Englishman usually worships. 
Official distinctions may be necessary in the 
church, but rank is absolutely condemned. 
Those who imposed it with all its symbols 
upon the English church did so with the Bible 
before them, and their eyes open. Such a de- 
parture from its spirit and letter points us back 
to what has already been affirmed, that the 



44 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

word of God was shamefully ignored at the 
Reformation in England, in spite of the pro- 
tests of the Puritans. It was in support of 
despotism and aristocracy that the right of 
rulers to ordain rites and ceremonies, and 
otherwise change the external form of Chris- 
tianity, was urged with so much vehemence. 
The precepts of Christ did not weigh a feather 
in the scales against the lust of power and dis- 
play. 

The corner-stone of this grave error was the 
false assumption that the presbyter of the New 
Testament, usually translated " elder," was pro- 
perly represented by the word priest. That 
this is not true is evident to scholars every- 
where. Canon Earrar, a very eminent member 
of the English priesthood, has recently rebuked 
the Ritualists for pressing the use of the word 
"priest," which he forcibly shows is never ap- 
plied to Christian ministers in the New Testa- 
ment. The same familiar fact has been urged 
for centuries, but the hierarchy of the Anglican 
church clings to that word as they would to a 
sacrament, and far more warmly than they do 
to the articles of their faith. They so highly 
value it that they would suffer their church to 
be rent in twain rather than surrender it. 

They cling to the unscriptural term in pre- 
ference to the scriptural word presbyter, for a 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 45 

purpose, well knowing that it is a Romish im- 
posture associated with the so-called sacrifice 
of the mass. It is a daring liberty with the 
word of God, to insist upon applying to the 
disciples of Christ, contrary to his and their 
own example, a title they studiously avoided 
using. For, if the functions had been the same, 
no title would have been more natural and ap- 
propriate. Its absence is equal to a . volumi- 
nous argument against it. But all arguments 
fail when addressed to unwilling minds. The 
retention of this term to designate the order of 
Christian ministers corresponding to presby- 
ters, although clearly contrary to the Scrip- 
tures, is favorable to their theory of the grada- 
tion of the ministry, and would furnish more 
plausibility for their unauthorized ceremonies. 
There were grades in the Mosaic priest- 
hood who had charge of temple and altar, 
and the term comports in many points with 
the notion of a revival of it in the Christian 
church. 

But our argument is not theoretical in the 
least. We object on the ground that the Bible 
gives no countenance to the use of the word 
"priest" to designate Christian ministers as 
distinct from laymen. All Christians are to be 
"kings and priests unto God," in a sense other- 
wise explained. A threefold clergy, of bishops, 



46 Letteks to a Young Presbyterian. 

priests, and deacons, is about as foreign to the 
New Testament church as dukes, earls, and 
barons would be as constituents in the gov- 
ernment of the United States. I propose to 
make this exposure more obvious as I pro- 
ceed. 



LETTER VIII. 



Dear : I think you will agree with 

me that an unbiased reader of the New Testa- 
ment would never infer from what it has to say 
about deacons that they were provided by our 
Lord as the lowest of three distinct orders of 
clergy. The inflexible law of the Anglican 
church requires that a minister of the gospel 
shall never be made a priest, that is, a pres- 
byter, without being first ordained as a deacon. 
And the deacon is held to be essentially a pro- 
bationer for the priesthood, to assist the in- 
cumbent in the sacraments, and serve him in 
the distribution of alms. I care little for un- 
necessary criticism of this provision, so far as 
concerns the functions of the diaconal onice. 
These are not very different from those assigned 
to it by the Presbyterian Church. But I wish 
from the start to point out the great error of 
the Anglican system in claiming from the 
Bible a threefold ministry with the diaconate 
as the lowest rank. 

It seems to be the fate of its authors and 
chief supporters to entangle themselves inex- 
tricably in lengthy and inconsistent argumenta- 
47 



48 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

tion on the subject. It is amazing that the 
able and accomplished organizers of the same 
system in the United States have, in their 
preface to the ordination service, commenced 
with these words : " It is evident unto all men, 
diligently reading Holy Scripture and ancient 
authors, that from the apostles' time there have 
been these orders of ministers in Christ's 

church bishops, priests, and deacons." 

How a diligent reading of Holy Scripture could 
afford any historical information concerning 
the orders in the church, after the canon of 
Scripture was closed, is beyond all our powers 
of comprehension. An Irish bull is not sup- 
posable, and we are forced to interpret it as 
a claim that the New Testament foreshadows 
the Anglican system. But this concedes that, 
historically speaking, the New Testament is 
against it. 

My object is to show that a diligent reading 
of Holy Scripture leads, as straight as a line 
can be drawn, to the conclusion that, in the 
apostolic age, if not afterwards, no such grada- 
tion in the ministry was established. The ordi- 
nation of deacons in the Jerusalem church was 
expressly for the purpose of enabling the apos- 
tles to give themselves " continually to prayer and 
to the ministry of the word." And it is to be 
noted, that the word ministry is the same as dea- 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 49 

conship in the original. The seven were to be 
deacons in " serving tables," whilst the apostles 
were deacons in preaching. It was a division 
of labor, and no mention is made of any priestly 
function, but a distinct intimation is given that 
"serving tables" interfered with the duty of 
preaching the word. 

From this clear statement of the supposed 
origin of the office, I judge that the diaconate 
was founded, not to assist a higher order in 
sacramental or teaching duties, but to render 
service in the distribution of alms. As a re- 
ligious office, it is a stepping-stone to more 
spiritual functions, and very naturally Philip 
was afterwards found serving his Lord as a 
preacher. But we have no evidence that 
Stephen did so. His address appears to me, 
not as a Christian sermon, but as the personal 
vindication of a martyr. The duties of deacons, 
as such, were evidently unconnected with an 
altar or a pulpit, and of such a character that 
others were enabled with less distraction to 
pray with and instruct the disciples. The office 
is an order for service to the church, but not 
an order in the ministry of the word. But this 
office existed in the church, not after the times 
of the apostles merely, but under their admin- 
istration. Holy Scripture, instead of repre- 
senting the deacon as a probationer for the 
4 



50 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

ministry of the word, exhibits him historically 
as a servant, to do what would embarrass the 
preaching of that word. If the ministry of the 
word is intended by the threefold arrangement 
of the Anglican system, the Scripture, apart 
from " ancient authors," is clearly against the 
deacon as one of its orders. 

But it is still more evident that the deacon, 
as " assistant to the priesthood," has no scrip- 
tural standing, if we have shown conclusively 
that there is no priest in the Christian church 
distinct from the body of believers. If an 
order of that kind does not exist, there cannot, 
be an assistant. This fact appears incontro- 
vertibly true, if we consider the requisite quali- 
fications for the presbyter as laid down by Paul. 
See Epistle to Titus i. 5-9 inclusive. There is 
no intimation in the whole passage of any 
sacrificial rite, but simply the duties of a ruler 
in the church, and such a character as becomes 
him who undertakes them. If presbyter meant 
priest, as these Anglicans contend, we not only 
have to explain the change of name, but the 
inexplicable omission of all reference to sacri- 
fice or priestly intercession. There is, there- 
fore, not a shred of scriptural proof discernible 
to sustain the notion of a triple gradation of a 
priesthood, or a threefold ministry of the word. 
The deacons must be counted out, except as 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 51 

dispensers of the alms of the church, which is a 
business foreign to and incompatible with the 
ministry of the word, and equally incompati- 
ble with the supposed priesthood of the 
apostles. 

Now, I must beg the young people of our 
church through you to bear in mind that I am 
contending against the claim of scriptural proof 
for a ministry in three grades, including the 
deacon ; and I ask of each reader, however dili- 
gent, if he can count the deacon in on any 
ground whatever. And above all, I ask if a 
system of church order, coming in after the 
time of the apostles, would by any sort 
of logic be demonstrated by an appeal to 
the Scriptures, which were written daring that 
time. How in reason's name, could the Ameri- 
can form of government be represented as in 
operation after the Eevolution, in books written 
before that great war began? A prophetical 
episcopate might be so maintained, but the 
historical — never! You are aware that it is 
continually urged as the basis of union, that 
the scriptural and historic episcopate shall be 
adopted by all denominations. We find, how- 
ever, that the Scriptures are only claimed as 
proof that the said system existed in fact after 
they were completely written. It would hardly 
accord with our ideas of a rational process in 



52 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

law to undertake the conviction of a prisoner 
accused of murder on the evidence of an eye- 
witness who was in his grave when the crime 
was committed. It is as clear as noon-day 
that "ancient authors," and not the Bible, 
are the true source of this Eomish svstem. 



LETTER IX. 



Dear : The number three is an object 

of superstitious veneration with Englishmen 
generally. The insular mind cannot conceive 
of a reputable government without king, lords, 
and commons, or a church without bishops, 
priests, and deacons. But the reasons for this 
faith are in both cases tradition al. Both 
systems have been handed down from antiquity, 
and are therefore sacred in the eyes of the 
average Anglican. But when we point him to 
the most ancient of all books, and the most sa- 
cred of all authorities bearing upon the subject 
of the church, he falls into confusion, and loses 
his reckoning. The mystical number three 
cannot stand the glare of biblical light. The 
deacon, as an assistant of priests or bishops in 
their clerical functions, disappears when the 
darkness of tradition gives way before the light 
of the New Testament. 

The same fate attends upon the bishop, as a 
rank above presbyters. In Anglican eyes, a 
bishop is a clerical grandee, with a province of 
priests and parishes under his sway. A con- 
siderable volume might be compiled of ecclesi- 
53 



54 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

astical words and phrases peculiar to England, 
and unknown to the Scriptures. But when the 
historical claim, for such an office as an Eng- 
lish bishop holds, is candidly investigated, it is 
found that inspired history directly condemns 
it, as it does the Anglican diaconate. This 
not only appears from the concession of the 
Episcopal Church in the United States, that 
the three orders take their date after the death 
of the apostles, but from the explicit acknow- 
ledgment of many eminent Anglican authori- 
ties. It is, indeed, impossible to deny that, in 
the New Testament, the word bishop is used 
interchangeably with presbyter. Few writers 
of character have ever questioned the signifi- 
cant fact. The English theory is, that a change 
of titles occurred after the time of the apostles. 
But my inquiry refers to the apostolic age. 
We think the Scriptures ought to precede the 
traditions which followed them. If the unin- 
spired writers of subsequent ages are left out 
of view, and the Bible has its proper credit, 
the candid reader will find that not only the 
deacon disappears as the lowest of three cleri- 
cal orders, but the bishop, as a diocesan, will 
vanish with equal velocity. 

So far as the historical authority of the New 
Testament prevails, its written testimony reads 
that the presbyter was a bishop. In the Angli- 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 55 

can system, the priest is never a bishop unless 
consecrated to a new and superior rank. How 
such an episcopate can be historical, when the 
most reliable and oldest historical authority on 
the subject in explicit terms contradicts it, is 
incomprehensible. And yet this is the form in 
which all denominations are now invited to 
adopt it. 

All educated ecclesiastics in the Anglican 
church are perfectly aware of the facts. They 
know with absolute positiveness that the word 
episcopos, which is translated " bishop," signi- 
fies in the New Testament generally the same 
office as presbyter. But with the mass of the 
lay membership, including the humble and 
devout in very large proportion, the opposite 
impression is prevalent. I suppose nine out of 
ten, when reading the New Testament, and 
perceiving the frequency of the word bishop, 
conclude habitually that the title is applied, as 
in the Church of England, to a dignitary who 
exercises jurisdiction over a body of priests 
and a number of parishes. Practically, the 
belief of these good people is, that the Scrip- 
tures are in their favor, and that the Presbyte- 
rians are the parties who irreverently ignore 
the holy word of God! We need not resent 
this rather harmless notion of multitudes of 
Christians. Antecedents of controlling influ- 



56 . Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

ence have conspired to create the erroneous im- 
pression. 

But we cannot easily excuse the more con- 
scious parties who know what they do, and do 
it with the intention to sustain, under color of 
the Scriptures, a system of church government 
which comes wholly from tradition. 

It is a favorite notion with these ingenious 
polemics that, although the threefold gradation 
is not visible in the letter of the New Testament, 
its germ is wrapped up in the folds, as seed in 
a pod. This is a substitution of the fancy of 
the reader for the clear enunciation of an 
author. It cannot be true of the historical 
parts of the book, since the function of history 
is to reveal and not to conceal its facts. The 
suggestion insults the unbiased mind. It is in 
direct conflict with the plain language to which 
it refers. Two cannot be the germ of three. 
When Paul addressed the bishops and deacons 
in the church at Philippi, he recognized, not 
two orders of clerics, but two classes of officers 
having diverse functions. And this incidental 
fact can no more be a germ of three classes of 
such officers in the church of a future age 
than the association of Paul and Barnabas was 
a germ of the Council of Trent. 

All such efforts to hunt up one's foregone con- 
clusions in a book of divine revelation, as the 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 57 

pathologist searches for the germs of disease, 
appear to the lovers of truth for its own sake 
a strange liberty to take with "the oracles of 
God." But we are thus reminded again of the 
old conflict between Churchman and Puritan, 
in which the latter protested against the al- 
leged right of rulers to use their authority 
when no express prohibition could be found in 
the Bible. A free construction of this claim is 
the prolific mother of inventions in the church, 
and may justify a thousand abuses. If strict 
construction is necessary in administering hu- 
man law, much more should we be cautious in 
handling the written instructions of the word 
of God. If that word were duly respected, the 
Anglican system would not remain for an hour. 
The "three orders" would be promptly aban- 
doned. This will be abundantly demonstrated 
hereafter, by an appeal to the sacred text, with 
the hope that the reader will agree with us that 
the closer we follow the precepts and prece- 
dents of the New Testament the safer we 
shall be. 



LETTER X. 



Dear : The word bishop, to which the 

churchmen attach so much importance, is a 
mere imitation in English of the Greek word 
for overseer — episcopos. The Saxon mouth 
shortened it at both ends, and converted it 
into "bishop." "We must remember that the 
true translation is preserved in Acts xx. 28 of 
the Authorized Version. The New "Version 
changes it into bishop, to make it conform 
everywhere to the same rule. So now, the 
true translation — overseer — is found only in the 
margin of the New and one text of the Old 
Version. But "bishop" is no translation, but 
an awkward imitation of the Greek, like baptize. 
In both cases a great deal of trouble might have 
been avoided if these Greek words had been 
actually translated. The failure to do so has 
entailed upon the modern church two forms of 
exclusive churchmanship that cannot be re- 
conciled, and contribute nothing but pretension 
and bitterness to our discussions. 

Paul was addressing "the elders of the 
church" at Ephesus, whom he had summoned 
58 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 59 

to meet him at Miletus. The Greek term for 
"elder" is, here and elsewhere, presbuteros. 
The Anglicans insist upon using the word 
priest instead of elder. According to them, 
Paul was speaking to the "priests" of Ephe 
sus. But he gives them the title of overseers, 
or bishops in the verse referred to : " The 
Holy Ghost hath made you (the presbyters or 
priests) bishops (that is, overseers) over the 
Christian disciples at Ephesus." (See Acts 
xx. 28.) Such is his precise language. It 
leaves no room for question by any one who 
respects the inspired word. The persons ad- 
dressed were bishops over a small congrega- 
tion of converts. Not a shadow can rest upon 
the fact. A man must be desperately anxious 
to establish a theory of his own preference if 
he sets to work to break the force of this fact, 
which is worth a thousand theories. 

We are told in this same Book of Acts that 
Paul and Barnabas, on revisiting the little 
groups of their converts, "ordained elders (or 
priests, as the Anglican persists in calling them) 
in every church." Clearly, then, this was an 
ordination of bishops — priests and bishops be- 
ing the same by English authority! When 
afterwards Paul wrote his Epistle to Titus, he 
instructed him to "ordain elders," bishops, of 
course, in every city. This was doubtless the 



60 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

same as "every church," as the congregations 
must have been small. The same, thing ap- 
pears in the address to the Philippian church. 
It contained a body of bishops and one of 
deacons. No mention is made of elders or 
priests, and we are forced to conclude that the 
elders were the bishops. These bishops, or 
elders, or priests, call them what we will, were 
a body of officers over one congregation. To 
deny it would justify a denial of the whole 
Bible. The Anglican theorists cannot deny it, 
and their habit is to yield the point, so far as 
language goes, and to argue at length that the 
apostles were the diocesans, and that the title of 
bishop was afterwards transferred to their suc- 
cessors. So, then, the bulk of Anglican readers 
of the New Testament are all wrong in sup- 
posing the Presbyterians have neglected the 
Scriptures in not providing diocesan bishops 
to govern their church. - 

I will have something to say about succes- 
sors to the apostles in the sequel. At present 
your fixed attention is invited to the constitu- 
tion of the little churches founded by Paul. 
Undeniably they were each under the pastoral 
care of a body of men scripturally-called elders 
and bishops. They had the sacraments, but of 
course no apostle was present in the church of 
Corinth when the eucharist was profaned. 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 61 

(See 1 Cor. xi. 21.) The address to tlie bishops 
of Ephesus shows clearly that they were pas- 
tors of the flock. It is, therefore, beyond dis- 
pute that these were not vacant churches. 
They were equipped for service, with a body 
of ruling elders or bishops in charge, which 
no Anglican parish in either hemisphere is 
known to have. 

This departure from the constitution of the 
apostolical churches is not only chargeable 
upon the Anglican system, but upon others in 
our Protestant ranks. Congregational, Baptist, 
and Methodist Churches are organized in a 
variety of ways, but none of them under the 
care of a body of bishops, like the churches of 
Greece, Asia Minor, and Crete in the days of 
Paul. Presbyterians all over the world, and 
some Lutherans, have such a government, and 
can say that they are after the apostolic model. 
"Why is this difference seen ? I answer, because 
we have been strict constructionists, and have 
aimed to follow the example set by the inspired 
founders of Christianity. Others were content 
at the Reformation in England to allow unin- 
spired men to regulate matters at discretion. 
The Anglicans fell back upon tradition, and 
Congregationalists and Methodists have subse- 
quently followed human suggestions of expe- 
diency, and adopted opposite forms of govern- 



62 Letteks to a Young Presbyterian. 

merit. Methodism concentrates power in the 
conference, and puts a local congregation under 
a single pastor, or a travelling preacher. The 
Congregationalists and Baptists concentrate 
power in the hands of the people of a local 
church, and have no body of ruling and teach- 
ing elders recognized as bishops. I refer to 
these facts to impress upon my young readers 
the peculiar zeal of Presbyterians for scriptural 
authority in the matter of organization. It is 
not claimed that this system is enjoined, but 
that it is primitive and apostolical, and is the 
safest one to follow. And we humbly think 
the multitude of divisions among Protestants 
is due to indifference among English Christians 
to the examples on record. 

But I especially point to the incontrovertible 
fact of Scripture, that bishop means overseer, 
not over a diocese, but over a congregation, 
and not by one man, but by several associated 
together. No matter what some of the fathers, 
who wrote after the age of the apostles, may 
say about bishops, the highest authority of the 
Bible ought to be respected by a sincere Chris- 
tian. The young Presbyterian ought to be 
well posted on this one point, for the reason 
that zealous Anglicans are very apt to argue 
their own superiority on the ground of anti- 
quity. Their system is, in fact, the deliberate 






Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 63 

construction of courtiers and churchmen under 
the Tudors and the Stuarts. Denying this, 
they plead an antiquity up to the second cen- 
tury ; but we go still further back, and claim to 
copy the system of the apostles themselves. 



LETTER XI. 



Deae : The theory of the Anglican 

churchmen, that the apostles were diocesan 
bishops, and that after their death their suc- 
cessors were not called apostles, but took the 
title which they themselves had given to the 
order immediately below them, viz., that of 
bishop — that theory is as amusing a study as 
history presents. The Church of Rome has 
had among its champions some of the greatest 
of men, and yet these able advocates have 
not been ashamed to defend the most puerile 
fictions in her behalf. They would undertake 
to demonstrate that our Lord, in instituting the 
Supper, held his body in his hands ; or that two 
prayers, offered at opposite points on the globe 
simultaneously to the Virgin Mary, would at 
once reach her ears in heaven — no matter how 
far away! There is no proposition too self- 
contradictory for such ecclesiastical athletes. 
But, although the Church of England formally 
renounced popery, it retained a number of 
popish ideas, and inherited some degree of the 
Romish facility for incredible conceits. It is 
well known that the divine right of kings to 
64 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 65 

their crowns was taught by many of her ablest 
writers not many generations back. The so- 
phistry of Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
on this subject, at the Revolution of 1688, fur- 
nished an occasion for the matchless satire of 
Lord Macaulay. A number of the bishops of 
that day puzzled their own brains almost be- 
yond endurance in the effort to reconcile their 
allegiance to two different dynasties. 

But the problem of conflicting allegiance has 
long since given way to another, which now 
exercises the ecclesiastical intellect of England. 
This problem is to establish the divine right of 
the Anglican bishops to an inheritance of the 
prerogatives of the first apostles by successive 
consecration. They do not claim all the apos- 
tolic gifts, but only those which are permanent 
in the order, as administrators of the different 
dioceses. But they do claim that the apostles 
were the diocesan bishops of the primitive 
church, and that this office has descended to 
them by successive ordinations without a break. 
1 wish to engage the attention of the reader 
to an inquiry into this theory, which seems to 
many of us quite equal in absurdity to the doc- 
trine of transubstantiation, or the divine right 
of a Nero. 

In the first place, as connected with the pre- 
ceding letter, it is pertinent to ask how it came 



66 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

to pass that the immediate " successors of the 
apostles" were designated by a title then be- 
longing to the subordinate order of presbyters 
(or priests). One would suppose that if Titus 
ordained a corps of bishops in each of the 
cities of Crete, the subsequent ordination of 
one man as bishop over the island would 
have created a confusion of tongues akin to 
that of BabeL Only imagine the scene that 
such a change would make in the United States 
army, if the title of general were suddenly sup- 
pressed, and that of lieutenant were applied to 
the officer commanding a brigade ! Such would 
have been the effect if the governing functions 
of Paul had been, after his death, transferred 
to a Cretan bishop, without indicating his suc- 
cession to the apostolate by a corresponding 
title. Strange, indeed, if titles were so very 
scarce, that they were forced to use one already 
appropriated to a lower order. A lieutenant 
put in command of several regiments, and still 
designated as lieutenant, would disorganize an 
army! It is often said that there is nothing in 
a name. But there is a great deal in the use 
we make of it. A rose would be quite as sweet 
under another name, but if it were applied to 
some other flower, the confusion would be ob- 
vious and embarrassing. Such a change would 
be a calamity, in church or state. 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 67 

Conscious of this difficulty, the prelatical po- 
lemic suggests that the title was gradually with- 
drawn from the "priests" and conferred upon 
the successors of the apostles. But this only 
aggravates the trouble. They claim that the 
apostles had successors to their office as rulers 
of dioceses. That office must have received a 
new name when that of apostle was dropped. 
No such successor is known in history as an 
apostle. Some other title must have at once 
taken its place, or the office went on without a 

name. The successor was the of Ephesus, 

or the of Antioch ! The notion of a gradual 

change is plainly no relief from the difficulty 
involved in the theory, but increases the trouble. 
An officer newly commissioned to command a 
brigade would not be appointed without desig- 
nating his grade. The successors of the apos- 
tles must have been consecrated to an office 
with a name attached, and if it was not bishop 
at once, it must have been something else. 
What was it? They say it was after a time 
borrowed from a subordinate grade, the bishop 
of a parish, and the latter by degrees surren- 
dered his title and assumed that of " priest." 
But, in the meantime, the office of " successor 
to the apostle" was absolutely nameless. A 
living Anglican bishop, under this theory, is 
the present terminus of an unbroken line ex- 



68 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

tending back to the apostles. Of course, some 
one occupied the other end, and was ordained 
by the apostles. Of course, some words of 
consecration were used, such as, "By the lay- 
ing on of my hands, and by divine authority, I 
now ordain thee as the blank of Ephesus, or 
the blank of Corinth ! " 

It is far more reasonable to imagine the word 
bishop to have been used, and we are thrown 
back into the confusion of bishops of provinces 
and bishops of parishes at the same time, as if 
companies and brigades were now officered by 
lieutenants in our regular army. What a mess 
it would make! We know the change came in 
gradually, but cannot reconcile it with the im- 
mediate succession. The whole trouble is due 
to the unfounded conceit of these churchmen, 
that the apostles established an order in the 
church superior to those bishops who were 
presbyters. Drop that idea, and it becomes 
credible that a corrupted church should, in 
time, advance one of these primitive bishops 
to superintend the others, and fix upon him 
the title of bishop, retaining the designation of 
presbyter for the inferior clergy. 



LETTER XII. 



Dear : It is not my object to create 

prejudice against the Church of England. I 
am dealing freely with it, but merely to impress 
upon the reader that it has gone further astray 
from the simplicity of primitive Christianity 
than our own communion, without implying 
that the latter is above criticism. The millen- 
nium alone will see a perfect church. The 
English Church is Protestant and evangelical 
in its fundamental principles, as found in its 
articles of religion and much of its literature. 
One who abandons Presbyterianism and goes 
over to Anglicanism does not apostatize from 
Christianity, but gives up a more scriptural 
system for one that is less so. The error is 
easily condoned, if committed ignorantly. It 
is "a graver offence when committed with open 
eyes. I am about to show that the Anglican 
bishops are no successors of the apostles, ex- 
cept in a sense applicable to the humblest 
parish priest. I hold that all ordained Chris- 
tian ministers are successors in respect to their 
commission. But there are overwhelming rea- 
sons for declaring that diocesan episcopacy 
69 



70 Letteks to a Young Presbyterian. 

had no existence under the apostles, and could 
not have been transmitted to others. This 
proposition will be handled by and by. I now 
ask you to consider the contrast actually visi- 
ble betwen these bishops and the members of 
the apostolic college. The latter were, to the 
last, examples of that humility and plainness 
of life which the Master had enjoined. They 
were not "lords over God's heritage," but 
models of lowliness that made them acceptable 
associates of the artisans and peasantry of their 
time. How is it with their alleged successors ? 
There are men of fervent piety and profound 
personal humility among them, undoubtedly. 
But the Anglican system makes them ex officio 
peers of the realm. There is no duke in Eng- 
land, royalty excepted, who is not outranked 
by the Archbishop of Canterbury. They all 
sit in the House of Lords. " Your lordship " 
is the address accorded to each. They reside 
in palaces, they receive pompous respect in 
public, and some of them enjoy great revenues. 
In these externals I am sure that the English 
prelates are in nowise successors of the apostles. 
The spirit of Christ may be retained in their 
personal character, but the system itself is 
manifestly contrary to the office of apostle as 
constituted by him. No greater contrast to 
Paul making tents, or Peter sojourning with a 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 71 

tanner, can be found than that which is con- 
stantly presented by cardinals at Kome, and 
church dignitaries in London. Of course an 
exact resemblance could not reasonably be ex- 
pected. But it would be a becoming respect 
to the spirit of the gospel if this ecclesiastical 
knighthood were dismounted, and the working 
clergy of the church better supplied with food 
and raiment. 

The apostolic office was a service, and not an 
investment with rank. The Lord himself was 
a servant of servants. When the pope became 
a king, a high crime was committed against the 
essential spirit of Christianity. When the 
English clergy accepted worldly homage, and 
joined the worldly aristocracy of the kingdom, 
a wound was inflicted upon our religion which 
ages of humiliation cannot heal. Pride and 
ambition are seen in other sects, and greatly 
injure the usefulness of the ministry. But the 
English hierarchy surpasses all others in the 
Protestant world for worldly pomp and mag- 
nificence. It is indisputable, on the other hand, 
that our Lord intended his ministers in all ages 
to be exemplars of his religion in their manner 
of life. But it is hard for a peer of England, 
surrounded with wealth and pageantry, to prac- 
tice the condescension of the gospel. 

It is equally hard for a people who are edu- 



72 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

cated to regard one class of ministers as above 
another in rank to avoid the impression that 
rank everywhere makes. In all parts of the 
world such bishops are invested in the popular 
mind with a social importance which is denied 
to the subordinate classes. A snobbish hom- 
age is paid them, whether they seek it or not. 
Even in our republican country, the secular 
press and the staring crowd are ready to ac- 
cord to a Eomish magnate, or an Anglican 
bishop, such a recognition as no plain minister 
of the gospel is apt to receive. It is a natural 
infirmity too deeply seated to be always sup- 
pressed by the democratic principle. Assump- 
tion, however false, generally secures its object 
at the hands of the thoughtless and ignorant 
masses. The world certainly believes in rank, 
pomp, and ceremony. The spiritually-minded 
alone perceive how foreign they are to the re- 
ligion of Christ. 

Now, in all these respects, it is obvious that 
the hierarchies of prelatical churches are 
strange "successors" of apostles who were for- 
bidden to indulge in power and parade. The 
aspiration of most of them would seem to be 
for a showy contrast to the twelve fishermen 
or lowly Jesus who founded the primitive 
church. If, as has been suggested by one of 
these "successors," the immediate inheritors 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 73 

of the apostolic rank relinquished the apos- 
tolic title out of pure humility, we have the 
modern prelate, strangely oblivious of that 
lowly sentiment, claiming the substance of the 
office, whilst relinquishing its shadow, the title 
of apostle. It is our suggestion that, under the 
circumstances, the secular world might take 
the liberty to ignore the blushes of these spirit- 
ual peers, and press upon them, however un- 
willing, the ancient name of the office. "His 
grace, the Apostle of Springfield," would fitly 
designate the gentleman who was so shocked 
at the consecration of Phillips Brooks. 

I may be very dull in my perceptions, but 
cannot see exactly the ground of all this 
modesty in regard to the name of an office 
which is fought for, so far as its rank and au- 
thority are concerned, with a daring unsur- 
passed. One would think that a dignity and 
power that have withstood the storms of more 
than eighteen hundred years, might now war- 
rant the assumption of the primitive title by 
men who have so long enjoyed them v& posses- 
sion. 



LETTER XIII. 



Dear : The Anglican claim, that the 

apostles held an office of the diocesan order, 
was not set up by the first English Eeformers. 
It was an after-thought of others to sustain 
their pretension against the scriptural argu- 
ments of the Puritans. You, as a diligent 
reader of the Bible, know well that it is not in- 
timated in the New Testament. Had it been 
true, the Acts and Epistles would have shown 
it clearly. One quotation from the Psalms in 
the Acts (chap. 1) uses the word hishoprick in 
the Old Version, in reference to Judas: "His 
bishoprick let another take." In the New Ver- 
sion it is rendered " office." In Greek it is epis- 
copen, which means oversight. In the same 
chapter, the office is called, in both versions, a 
" ministry," or deaconship, the Greek word being 
diaconia. Upon this little thread the after- 
thought hangs. It is argued that Judas was a 
bishop of the Anglican type. 

This plea amounts to nothing with intelligent 
people whose minds are free to judge. You 
know, I doubt not, that Presbyterians have 
74 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 75 

bishops in far greater numbers than the English 
church. With us bishops and elders are tne 
same. We are Episcopalians on a large scale, 
and every congregation is a bishoprick. We 
attach very little importance to the official 
title, holding with Paul that any one of the 
various designations he employs may be ap- 
plied to the office; as pastor, or shepherd, 
presbyter, or elder, overseer, or bishop, will 
answer the purpose. We do not object to the 
use of the last-named title as unscriptural, be- 
cause its scriptural meaning is the real founda- 
tion of our doctrine of the spiritual ministry. 
It is plain that the bishoprick of Judas, if it 
signified any specific office, meant that office 
which episcopos represents in the New Testa- 
ment, and that is admitted to be the eldership. 
But the ordination of " a successor " to Judas, 
as given in the same chapter, ought to deter- 
mine what such a succession means. A "suc- 
cessor of the apostles" ought to be what 
Matthias was when so ordained. But on ex- 
amination of the passage we find that he was 
appointed to be one of twelve witnesses of the 
life of Jesus Christ from the baptism of John to 
the day of his ascension. There was no diocese 
in the case, but a peculiar and provisional 
office called " apostleship," to which, from its 
very nature, there could be no future succes- 



76 Le iters to a Young Presbyterian. 

sion. On the death of John, "the twelve" 
disappeared. The principal function of an 
apostle was to be a living eye-witness of Christ 
in the flesh; and such a function could not 
possibly be transmitted. 

You will agree with me, I feel sure, that "the 
twelve," as such, have now no successors. 
Only such apostles as Paul or Barnabas can be 
claimed as prototypes of the modern prelate 
with any decency. But even Paul seems to 
rely upon the fact that he had seen Jesus after 
his ascension. No explanation is given us of 
his apostleship, except his exclamations, "Am 
I not an apostle?" "Have I not seen Jesus 
Christ our Lord?" In Galatians i. he is par- 
ticular to affirm that his commission was ex- 
traordinary, and not through human hands. 
But the title is also applied to Barnabas, who 
claimed nothing of the kind. Who commis- 
sioned kiiii is not revealed. If any modern 
prelate imagines himself to be a successor to 
the apostolate, that of Barnabas alone is avail- 
able for him, and his pedigree must be trace- 
able to that single questionable case. I call it 
questionable, because Barnabas was certainly 
not one of the "twelve," and we have no evi- 
dence that he " had seen the Lord." Possibly 
he was called an apostle simply on account of 
his work as an evangelist, in association with 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 77 

Paul. But I affirm nothing, for the reason 
that I know nothing. A succession founded 
on his history would be worthless. 

The chief function of any officer constitutes 
his office. That of "the twelve," and of Paul, 
was direct testimony to the fundamental facts 
in the history of Christ. The commission was, 
Go into' a]l the world and proclaim these facts 
from your personal knowledge, and baptize the 
converts. If any modern prelate can show 
these proofs, he can properly claim to be a 
"successor." But this is impossible. They 
now claim to inherit only the authority to 
govern, to ordain, and to confirm; and these 
prerogatives, they maintain, belonged to the 
apostles as such, and were committed by them 
to an order superior to presbyters. The only 
persons known from Scripture to have been 
clothed with powers below the apostle, yet 
regarded as above the presbyters of their time 
by these prelatical logicians, were Timothy and 
Titus. They were in no proper sense apostles, 
and being subject to Paul's authority, were 
certainly not his equals. If superior to the 
bishops appointed over the churches, the three- 
fold hierarchy would be plausible. But it is 
clear that they were not successors to the 
apostles, from whom they did not inherit the 
chief function of that office. The Anglican 



78 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

bishop, if a regular "successor," must be a 
successor of such order as was held by Timothy 
and Titus. The question is, were they the 
prototypes of the highest three orders ? 

That Timothy and Titus carried into effect 
certain commands of Paul, there can be no 
doubt. But the thing we wish to know is the 
nature of these commands. If they were such 
as the presbyter-bishops were not permitted 
to perform, we will admit that these two agents 
of the apostle held an office necessarily perma- 
nent in the church. But this supposed supe- 
rior order of clergy appears to the reader of 
the New Testament a mere figment of the im- 
agination. In the first place, there was no 
name for it. They were not apostles, and by 
hypothesis they were not presbyter-bishops. 
And, besides, we discover no evidence of their 
authority to add to their own order. The 
duties assigned to them were apparently tem- 
porary. To our eyes they were commissioners, 
who went away under instructions, and re- 
turned to make their reports. If they were 
ever inducted into j)ermanent sees, we hear 
nothing of it. The impression the narrative 
makes is that they were deputies, charged with • 
certain urgent transactions committed to them 
by Paul. But these things were to organ- 
ize and ordain, and we have still to learn 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 79 

by whom these functions must be per- 
formed afterwards — by a nameless order of 
which they were the representatives, or by 
the bishops, who were identical with the 
elders. 



LETTER XIV. 



Deak : There is no evidence in the 

New Testament of a distinct order of ministers 
intermediate between the apostles and scriptural 
bishops. The only ordination that the utmost 
presumption can refer to as possibly a conse- 
cration to such an office was that of Timothy 
by Paul, if an ordination is indicated by the 
text of 2 Timothy i. 6 : " Stir up the gift of God 
that is in thee by the putting on of my hands." 
The imposition of hands did not always confer 
office. Often it was used in the bestowal of 
the Holy Ghost. Sometimes, also, in a special 
appointment, as when Paul and Barnabas were 
set apart as missionaries. TVe are not informed 
what the "putting on of hands" in this text 
conveyed. But it may be identical with that 
of 1 Timothy i. 14 : "Neglect not the gift that 
is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy ; 
with the laying on of the hands of the presby- 
tery." The latter seems to be a plain case of 
ordination by a court of presbyters, of whom 
Paul may have been one. 

But still we remain ignorant of any such 
80 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 81 

order as a nameless, intermediate one. The 
strange fact forces itself on us, that if prelacy 
existed at the time, no allusion to it can be 
found in the New Testament, which abounds in 
precept and example concerning those bishops 
who were, beyond dispute, the pastors of the 
local congregations. It is not credible that 
Paul would have given such particular direc- 
tions as to the qualifications necessary for 
bishops and deacons for one congregation, as 
are found in 1 Timothy iii. and also in Titus) i., 
and yet left not a line in reference to a superior 
order, of such importance as diocesan bishops, 
to rule many ministers and churches. This 
supposed order is purely imaginary, for the 
overwhelming reasons we have presented, that 
it is overlooked by Paul, not even verbally dis- 
tinguished, and not guarded by the cautions 
suggested in reference to the pastoral and dia- 
conal offices. I would not dwell so long upon 
this negative proof but for the necessity of 
"line upon line," in order to fortify the youth- 
ful mind against the persistency of those who 
contend for a hierarchy. "Who can possibly 
explain the silence of the New Testament con- 
cerning the character of men appointed to the 
supreme authority in the church, whilst great 
stress is laid upon the character of presbyter- 
bishops and deacons? 



82 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

The right answer for a well-posted Presby- 
terian to make, when challenged to account 
for the government of our church "without 
bishops," is to deny the allegation. We have 
bishops in abundance, more commonly called 
pastors. Let him ask in return for some good 
reason in Scripture for calling an incumbent a 
"rector," and a pastor a "priest." 

I am especially earnest in this inquiry, not 
because the prelatical office is a fundamental 
error, but because its advocates would never 
have invented it under the guidance of a rev- 
erent use of the New Testament. All through 
this discussion I bear in mind the purpose 
entertained at the beginning, to demonstrate 
the greater fidelity of Presbyterianism to the 
word of God written. This is illustrated very 
forcibly by this study of orders. We find the 
very words of Scripture in favor of a govern- 
ment in the church by presbyters, who are also 
called bishops, and a service in the church by 
deacons, who were appointed expressly to at- 
tend to the bodily wants of the membership. 
So far everything is plain sailing. But when 
it is urged that the supreme government was 
confided to an order superior to presbyters, we 
discover no trace of such an order in the New 
Testament, and invariably find its advocates 
impatient to hunt up some uninspired writer of 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 83 

a subsequent age. This anxiety for proof from 
tradition is strong confirmation of our claim 
that Presbyterianism is the more scriptural 
system. 

But, in order to deepen this conviction, I 
go much further. I appeal to the same plain 
letter of the word to show that, if we avert our 
minds from the extraordinary and incommuni- 
cable gifts of the true apostles, there is no 
clerical gradation in the New Testament. The 
oftener the book is read, the deeper is the im- 
pression that preaching the gospel was the 
highest function contemplated in the Christian 
ministry. The prelatical theory is all wrong 
on this subject. It exalts the priestly function 
above that of preaching the word, and regards 
rule and administration as superior in their 
nature to the proclamation of Christ. It is 
contradicted by the letter and spirit of the 
Scriptures. The great commission was, "Go 
and preach." Paul expressly declares " Christ 
sent me not to baptize, but to preach the 
gospel." He, moreover, protests, "God for- 
bid that I should glory, save in the cross of 
our Lord Jesus Christ." And unquestionably 
it was his greatest boast that he was permitted 
to wave this standard before mankind, and 
offer them salvation. He administered sacra- 
ments, and issued orders, and applied dis- 



84 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

cipline in the church, we know; but those 
duties are not the themes of his enthusiasm. 
It was preaching that inflamed him with con- 
suming zeal. 

The epistles of Paul overflow with laudation 
of the preached word. He describes himself 
as one " ordained as a preacher and an apostle" 
(1 Timothy ii. 7; 2 Timothy i. 11), and, in the 
latter text, adds "teacher" to his spiritual call- 
ing. It would weary you to cite the whole 
array of proof texts to show that preaching was 
in his estimation the highest function of a 
Christian minister, and the principal means of 
salvation. Hear him exclaim, as in Eomans 
x. 14 : "How shall they hear without a 
preacher?" Mark the contrast between him 
and the modern prelatical dignitary who boasts 
of his succession to the apostles ! In the esti- 
mation of the latter, generally, the most im- 
portant thing in a parish is a priest to minister 
at an altar, conduct a ceremonious worship by 
a service-book, administer the sacraments, 
observe the feasts noted in the almanac, and, 
as sole rector, govern the flock committed to 
his hands, and preach and teach from a little 
structure near the altar. But these last- 
named duties are represented as insignificant 
in comparison with his priestly performances 
in his sacred vestments, and when he "mag- 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 85 

nines his office," it is the administration of 
rites that he regards as his supreme work, 
and the preaching of the cross is an inci- 
dent in the prescribed routine of one "in holy 
orders." 



LETTER XV. 



Dear — : My last letter contrasted the 

rector, or " priest," as he is called, with a suc- 
cessor of the apostle to the Gentiles, in his chief 
calling as a preacher. I wish now to examine the 
Anglican theory, that one in that exalted office 
of preacher of the cross may not be scripturally 
entrusted with the inferior duties of so-called 
confirmation and ordination. They contend, 
with a zeal worthy of the highest consecration, 
that no presbyter-bishop, although ordained to 
preach and administer the most solemn rites of 
Christianity, is allowed by the New Testament 
to receive a convert into full fellowship by lay- 
ing his hands upon him in prayer and invoking 
the Holy Ghost. This assumption is absolutely 
without foundation, but it is made by the An- 
glican church a primary principle of the system. 
Observe what it implies : the holy mysteries of 
baptism and the eucharist maybe administered 
by a parish priest, but this rite of confirmation 
is the prerogative of a higher order, and is re- 
served to a nameless functionary, who is au- 
thorized by the Scriptures to lay hands "after 
the example of the holy apostles." All this 
86 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 87 

implies a decision of the inspired word that the 
pastor of a church may not lay his hands in 
prayer for the Holy Ghost upon converts, with- 
out usurping a prerogative of his superior. 

But where is the evidence of such a superior 
order? The act of laying on of hands was not 
confined to the apostles. Paul and Barnabas 
had the hands of "certain prophets and 
teachers" laid upon them at Antioch. The 
trouble is that the Anglican church under- 
stands, or presumes, that the apostolic au- 
thority to confer the Holy Ghost in his extra- 
ordinary effusion, somehow descended to their 
supposed successors. Simon Magus was bap- 
tized by Philip, but the apostles alone could 
call down the Holy Ghost. (See Acts viii.) 
The Anglican mind vaguely concludes that this 
apostolic act is continued in the church, and 
being an exclusive function of the apostles can 
only be repeated now by successors of the 
apostles. The conclusion is a mere dream. 
The bestowal of the Holy Ghost through apos- 
tolic hands is no more enjoyed in the Christian 
church now than the resurrection of the dead ! 
All believers receive the Spirit as the giver of 
spiritual life, without ceremony. But the pente- 
costal effusion of apostolic times, conferring 
miraculous gifts, has never been witnessed 
since that period. 



88 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

What possible connection this extraordinary 
prerogative of the inspired apostles could have 
with the admission of youth to the communion, 
is beyond comprehension. There is no evi- 
dence whatever that Timothy or Titus ever 
ventured to repeat the awful act. Timothy is 
charged (1 Timothy v. 22) to " lay hands sud- 
denly on no man," but there is no hint that the 
charge refers to a pentecostal gift of the Holy 
Ghost. In order to establish their claim, our 
prelatical friends must show that the said rite 
is perpetuated in their hands alone, which is 
impossible ; and further, that the admission of 
"regenerate" applicants to the communion, 
with the laying on of the hands of an ordained 
preacher, and prayer for the continued in- 
dwelling of the Spirit of God, would violate 
scriptural order. 

But, moreover, as we have shown before, 
there is no evidence that in the organization of 
new churches the apostles prescribed any 
such ceremony as "confirmation." The con- 
stitution of churches was the work of evangel- 
ists, and the materials were converts to the 
faith. It is preposterous to maintain that these 
churches could not receive new members with- 
out the presence of apostolic hands. It is not 
credible that the resident authorities in them 
could not augment their numbers until vis- 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 89 

ited by a distant official having apostolic 
hands. 

The absurdity of this visionary scheme of 
church orders is frequently illustrated now in 
missionary fields. Large empires, like China 
and Japan, are the dioceses of an Anglican 
bishop for each. Sometimes they are vacant 
for a long time, and no one can be "confirmed" 
until the vacancy is filled. Many months 
elapse, and still the imaginary grace, which 
none but apostolic hands can secure, is with- 
held until the great successor arrives! When 
we ask for proof that the incumbent of the 
parish, who may baptize, and administer the 
communion, is scripturally forbidden to admit 
the candidates to full fellowship, the only ex- 
planation furnished is this theory which has 
been gratuitously assumed. 

The same assumption occurs in reference to 
ordination. It is arbitrarily taken for granted 
that "holy orders" cannot be conferred without 
apostolic hands. There must, therefore, be an 
order of successors to the apostles superior to 
the presbyter-bishops! But no evidence can 
be got to show that Paul, or Titus, or any one 
else, ordained others by virtue of authority 
superior to presbyters. If Timothy laid his 
hands upon "faithful men," as instructed to do, 
we are not informed that he was a "successor" 



90 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

of the apostles, or that he was superior in rank 
to the bishops that he ordained. 

The fact is that Timothy was ordained "by 
the laying on of the hands of the presbytery." 
Paul himself was a presbyter, as Peter declares 
himself to be, in 1 Peter i. 1, and presbyterial 
hands are the appointed symbols in ordination. 
Preaching the gospel was the highest power 
they could bestow, and the invention of an 
order above those bishops having the oversight 
of the churches, is a fiction suggested by sub- 
sequent usage. We are in search of a scrip- 
tural warrant for the nameless order, and 
wonder and wonder why no one in the New 
Testament ever thought of writing in terms 
about so important a feature of the church. 
The book is destitute throughout of the slightest 
allusion to an order of ministers, embracing 
Timothy and Titus, which was to be a perma- 
nent office, alone authorized to invoke the Holy 
Ghost on applicants for communion and ordi- 
nation with imposition of hands. The sugges- 
tion is irrational, as well as gratuitous, because 
it turns the truth upside down, and admitting 
the presbyters to the highest functions, restricts 
them from exercising the lower. But, above 
all, it seems to me incredible that this superior 
order had to go without any designation until 
John died, and then, all at once, assumed a 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 91 

place in history under the name of the order 
next below it ! An American bishop, who be- 
lieves the absurdity, suggests that it is an ex- 
ample of humility! The attempt to rule as 
apostles, under the lowly name of bishops, ap- 
pears to others suggestive of ambition rather 
than lowliness of spirit. 



LETTER XVI. 



Dear : I think you will agree with 

me that it has been demonstrated that the 
apostles organized the first churches among the 
Gentiles with bishops in each congregation to 
rule and teach, and deacons to serve tables; 
and that these presbyters, called bishops, were 
the only persons bearing that name in the 
apostolic age. If so, you will admit that, so 
far, the Presbyterian system is more scriptural 
than that which the Tudors and Stuarts 
adopted. I will now inquire in the same way 
how they compare in their styles of worship. 
You, perhaps, know that young people fre- 
quently indulge in unfavorable criticisms on 
what they consider a want of taste in our 
simple modes of worship. They maintain that 
religious services must be ornamental, stately, 
and in a fixed routine, and that the fine arts 
should be applied with the best resources of 
wealth to render the worship not only accept- 
able to God, but also attractive to man. 

The Puritans and Presbyterians have always 
contended, on the other hand, that the worship 
indicated under the gospel was after the simple 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 93 

usages of the Jewish synagogue, and not derived 
from the temple service that had been abolished. 
Anglican churchmen have generally resorted to 
argument on the subject, urging propriety and 
expediency in opposition to the scriptural rea- 
sons of others. They cannot deny the facts, 
but, as usual, endeavor to overrule them with 
force of logic, and confidently appeal to the 
superior style of those forms to be observed in 
their own services. It is plain that, by so 
doing, they sanction the principle so persist- 
ently held at Home, that the church is author- 
ized to devise rites and ceremonies at discretion, 
guided only by expediency, and without regard, 
to the designed simplicity pursued by the apos- 
tles. This principle is now open to discussion. 
I purposely avoid details. The Ritualists are 
right, if 'the principle is right , and all contention 
against particular schemes invented by them is 
labor thrown away. What we claim is, that 
the usages of the apostolic churches are a proof, 
so far as they go, of their rejection of symboli- 
cal worship as a system, and their adoption of 
methods characterized by intentional simplicity. 
Only two symbolical rites were appointed by 
the Lord, and neither of these admitted of any 
elegance of art. Water poured out for ablu- 
tion, bread and wine received through the lips 
as food and drink — these are not artistic exhi- 



94 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

bitions, but plain expressions of homely truths 
to be understood and remembered. The abso- 
lute silence of the New Testament in regard to 
other forms shows plainly to the candid reader 
that a worship characterized by artistic cere- 
mony was not in the minds of the inspired 
writers. No sane man can believe that an 
elaborate system like that of the Anglican 
prayer-book was in existence under the apos- 
tles, or provided for by any of them. The 
impression of a habitual reading of the New 
Testament is unavoidable, and directly opposite 
to that of a system artificially contrived to 
secure regularity, uniformity, beauty, and im- 
pressiveness. If the suggestions of the temple 
worship of the Jews were to be the guide of the 
first organizers of the church, one of the most 
inexplicable facts of Holy Scripture would be 
the absence of any allusion to it in all the New 
Testament. The word "priest" is studiously 
avoided in reference to preachers of the gospel. 
Temples, altars, vestments, sacrifices for sin, 
symbolical festivals, and priestly processions, 
are all ignored as either prohibited or insig- 
nificant, and the emphasis of the whole book is 
laid designedly upon matters of doctrine and 
personal duty. 

These are undeniable verities. The Anglican 
churchmen know this as well as we. The 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 95 

trouble is that they found a ceremonial system 
already in operation in Romish worship, and 
desired to retain it in part, independently of 
the written word. This desire led them to 
argue that the New Testament furnishes very 
little light upon the subject, and that the mode 
of worship under the apostolic regime was only 
provisional, leaving- the whole matter to the 
discretion and progressive experience of the 
church. This view is obviously fraught with 
the utmost danger and confusion. Of course 
the church must he clothed with power to en ■ 
force the edicts, and its members would be 
compelled to choose between secession and 
submission. The germs of sectarian division 
were widely sown by the spread of these doc- 
trines, and the diversity of Protestant Chris- 
tendom is easily traced to the arbitrary exercise 
of ecclesiastical power. 

On the other hand, Presbyterians adhere 
with a more faithful conservatism to the belief 
that the precedents of the New Testament were 
not recorded by inspiration for a mere tempo- 
rary purpose, but for the guidance of other 
generations. We cannot accept a theory that 
converts into so much useless rubbish many 
parts of a volume dictated by the Spirit of God. 
This view of the oracles uttered by him, being 
admitted, leads at once to the most dangerous 



96 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

consequences. If large portions of the record 
may be neglected as out of date, it is beyond 
human intelligence to discriminate between the 
temporary and the permanent contents of the 
book, and its divine authority is at once de- 
stroyed. An immense gulf lies between the 
reverent students of the Bible as the word of 
God and that large class of churchmen who 
thus ignore the precedents of the New Testa- 
ment, and attach undue importance to the 
wisdom of the church. 

Let me remind you that the rationalism of 
the present age is championed, to a great ex- 
tent, by Anglican churchmen. The Bible, as 
God's inspired book, has many warm defenders 
in that communion ; but you can easily under- 
stand that this theory, which regards the usages 
indicated in the New Testament as out of date, 
is closely allied with that rationalizing spirit that 
would rule out large portions of the written Scrip- 
tures. The principal champions of the Higher 
Criticism, which now discredits so much of the 
sacred records, are to be found in the Church 
of England, and no one need feel surprised 
that undue liberties are taken with the contents 
of the holy Bible by men who have been ac- 
customed from childhood to shut their eyes at 
the evidence it contains that the apostles, in 
organizing churches, abandoned the usages of 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 97 

the Jewish temple, and followed the more 
simple worship of the synagogue. On this 
point Presbj^terianism remains a steadfast de- 
fender of the Bible against Anglican objections 
to its simple style of worship. 



LETTER XVII. 



Dear : The loose habit of dealing 

with revelation which has always marked the 
history of the Anglican system, has not only 
made it unlike the primitive church in order 
and worship, but has led to deplorable conse- 
quences in regard to doctrinal tenets. The 
articles of religion adopted by the English Re- 
formers were in close conformity to the creeds 
of the other Reformed churches. The secular 
authorities did not interfere in their construc- 
tion as arbitrarily as they did in reference to 
government and worship. Puritans and Pres- 
byterians saw little to condemn in the written 
creed of the Church of England, called "the 
thirty-nine articles." But it is admitted on all 
hands that this summary of doctrine has be- 
come a dead letter with a large number of the 
clergy. They differ among themselves from 
the highest Calvinism to the lowest Armini- 
anism. But the most lamentable reflection is, 
that this state of things has been reached by 
the same disregard for the word of God that 
has characterized the body in other re- 
spects. 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 99 

The expliciiness of the New Testament in re- 
gard to fundamental truth is far greater than it 
is on points of order and worship. It is more 
difficult to evade by the ingenuity of interpre- 
tation. But this has been the persistent effort 
of many English theologians for centuries past. 
Not only is the Calvinism of their own articles 
rejected, but some of the worst heresies that 
were denounced by the earlier Reformers are 
revived and cordially espoused by conspicuous 
churchmen. I cannot follow up the charge 
into details, but the evangelical wing of that 
church complains of the fact as earnestly as 
we do. It is undeniable, and needs no proof. 
One would think that the repeated warnings of 
the Spirit of God against defections from the 
faith, as reiterated in express terms of Scrip- 
ture, would command a lowly and trembling 
obedience. But, alas! there are not wanting 
thousands of Anglican Christians who seem to 
attach little or no importance to the great 
spiritual truths that Christ and his apostles 
took so much pains to inculcate. And this un- 
soundness is not confined to laymen, but is the 
teaching of a great many ministers, who use the 
pulpit and pew to propagate a wild rationalism, 
or a superstitious Romanism. 

A church that holds and rejects the faith of 
the gospel, that pleads for orthodoxy in one 



100 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

place, and fosters heresy in another, that 
cleaves to the principles of the Keformation in 
one party, and shamefully betrays them through 
the misdirected zeal of several other parties — 
such a church is, of course, not justly entitled 
to exclusive supremacy in the kingdom of God. 
It was the glory of the Jews, according to Paul, 
that "to them were committed the oracles of 
God." An exclusive church is charged with a 
similar trust. But much as we love and re- 
spect the Anglican body, we cannot admit that 
it is more faithful to the Bible than other Pro- 
testant societies. 

It is impossible to be more specific within 
moderate limits. I can only say that the Broad 
Church party evidently embraces such diverse 
elements as unitarianism, universahsm, pelagi- 
anism, and general skepticism ; and the High 
Church party includes a dangerous number of 
superstitious Ritualists, and concealed Roman- 
ists. The church, as established, seems power- 
less to secure unity in spiritual doctrines, and 
is now doing all at once what Paul did at 
different times — preaching at one point the 
very faith it is destroying at another. 

An intelligent young Presbyterian, who fears 
God, and follows his conscience, will not be 
easily persuaded to prefer so complex and 
helpless a communion to his own. The ques- 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 101 

tion with him is, not which is perfect, but 
which adheres most faithfully to the word of 
God. The comparison is clearly unfavorable 
to the Anglican establishment, partly because 
it is allied, like so many others, with the gov- 
ernment, and partly by reason of its attitude to- 
wards the Holy Scriptures. From the begin- 
ning it repudiated the strictly biblical position 
of the Puritans, and insisted upon retaining 
many usages of the Roman Catholic Church 
which were foreign to the spirit and letter of 
the New Testament. Whenever this independ- 
ence of the word of God is maintained by any 
body of Christians, its faith necessarily suffers. 
Such a church may not be guilty of apostasy, 
but it is fairly chargeable with unfaithfulness. 
Its candlestick may not be removed, but its 
light is sadly obscured, because, in the lan- 
guage of John to one of the " seven churches," 
it may be justly rebuked for holding doctrines 
that are hated by the Spirit of God. " Repent, 
or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will 
fight against them (the Nicolaitans) with the 
sword of my mouth." Anglicanism is intol- 
erant of departures from its order and cere- 
monies, but is notoriously tolerant of departures 
from the faith of Christ. Other churches have 
their faults, and the Presbyterian has many 
sins to answer for. But, generally speaking, 



102 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

this church has been, in all its history in Great 
Britain and America, especially zealous for the 
Bible, "the religion of Protestants." 

But the chief contention with us is not a rubric, 
or a series of canons, or even the parochial epis- 
copacy which we know to be scriptural, but the 
scriptural doctrines of the gospel. We aim at 
a careful discrimination between the essential 
and the non-essential. We propose ortho- 
doxy of faith as the object of supreme regard, 
and relegate to the rear a punctilious church- 
manship. When a Christian man amongst us 
becomes aggrieved at some of our errors in 
practice, and concludes to look out for a new 
church connection, we have no right to com- 
plain if he can assure himself, Bible in hand, 
that Anglicanism is more scriptural than the 
system he abandons. He may yet serve God 
acceptably in the fold of "three orders." I 
simply aim to guard my junior brethren against 
self-delusion in a matter so solemn and. im- 
portant. Honest investigation is the honorable 
way to exchange party for party, and sect for 
sect. I want all restless Presbyterians to ex- 
amine first, and venture upon no change 
without study and prayer. And let them be 
firmly resolved to serve God for life in a Chris- 
tian association which they conscientiously re- 
gard as the most faithful to the word of God. 






LETTER XVIII. 



Dear : High-churchism has reached 

a crisis in its development, and its representa- 
tives evidently feel that something must be done 
to relieve the awkwardness of their midway 
position between Protestantism and Komanism. 
The British and American public will not 
countenance a surrender to the latter, and the 
peculiar dogma of three orders transmitted from 
the apostles will not suffer them to fully adopt 
the former. It now appears that they realize 
the obvious fact, that a persistent attitude of 
exclusiveness towards other Protestants is a 
bar to Christian unity, and a constant cause of 
sectarian divisions. So anxious have they be- 
come to effect a change, that, both in the 
United States and England, they have agreed 
to proffer to the other sects of the Reformation 
certain terms of union, in which the Anglican 
spirit is exhibited with frankness and apparent 
liberality. 

The heads of this proposition are reduced to 
four points of agreement, the Scriptures, the 
earliest creeds, the sacraments, and the historic 
103 



104 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

episcopate. All the Protestant denominations, 
generally, are invited to concur in these four 
great fundamentals as preliminary to union. 
The Anglican brethren are credited with a 
sincere and earnest desire for closer relations 
with other Christians, and all of these points 
might be acceptable to most of those to whom 
they are addressed if they could adopt them in 
the same sense. But there is a unanimous im- 
pression on all our minds that these terms 
admit of very different interpretations, and 
really present no basis for cordial union. 

In the first place, if the Holy Scriptures were 
to be received in good faith as the supreme 
authority, there would be no reason for any 
but the first of these heads. The creeds, the 
sacraments, and the episcopate must all be 
learned from the Bible. They are not worthy 
of acceptance and observance, except as far as 
they are in accordance with the word of God. 
We are not informed whether the Scriptures 
are to be considered as supre?ne } or merely co- 
ordinate with the church and the natural under- 
standing. The Anglican church is hopelessly 
discordant on that very question. Sectarian 
divisions generally spring from the different 
views entertained concerning the value of the 
sacred text. Some consider a large portion 
very questionable, and others, holding to its 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 105 

plenary inspiration, still fail to agree in conse- 
quence of different constructions. But the 
terms proposed by our Anglican friends suggest 
no remedy whatever. 

Moreover, the early creeds cover only a small 
part of the doctrinal teaching of the Scriptures, 
and their adoption would be superfluous, if the 
Bible itself could be made a basis of agreement. 
The denominations must concur without a dis- 
tinct and separate creed, or must have one far 
more complete than those which the offer 
suggests. 

Again, as the sacraments are scriptural insti- 
tutions, and the Bible may be received in all 
its integrity as a basis of union, I can see no 
occasion for a separate head under that name. 
The two symbolical rites are in the Bible, and 
may be adopted implicitly without a numerical 
specification. The separate form of proposi- 
tion seems to indicate an independent origin 
and authority for the creeds and sacraments, 
to which Protestants cannot intelligently sub- 
scribe. If I rightly understand the quadrilat- 
eral scheme for union, the acceptance of the 
Scriptures as the inspired and infallible word 
of God would include both creeds and sacra- 
ments, for the common forms of which we 
would be compelled to consult that supreme 
authority. Without a concordant view of what 



106 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

the Bible teaches, it would be impossible to 
unite upon either. 

But when we come to the last head, "the his- 
toric episcopate," it seems to me evident that the 
qualifying term was chosen as preferable to 
that which a strong zeal for the authority of 
the Bible would have suggested. The word 
" historical" seems to indicate still more than 
the separate categories for creeds and sacra- 
ments, an independent basis for the episcopate. 
The usual course of discussion on this subject 
among Anglican divines is, to concede that the 
scriptural episcopacy was parochial and Pres- 
byterian. The claim of a superior episcopate 
is, for the most part, founded upon "historical" 
data later in date than the New Testament. 
The word "historical," therefore, as forming 
one bastion of the quadrilateral, was doubtless 
used "wittingly," as Jacob used his hands 
when he blessed Joseph's sons. Had the word 
"scriptural" been selected, all objection on our 
part would have been avoided, except that 
which I have already urged in reference to the 
second and third points. But on this fourth 
point I find most serious objection to an epis- 
copate for which no "scriptural" warrant can 
be produced. I bring no uncharitable charge. 
The authors of the quadrilateral were too intelli- 
gent not to choose their language with a pm> 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 107 

pose, and that purpose was manifestly to resort 
to " outside history " as the basis of their claim 
to an episcopate authorized by divine authority 
and transmitted by the apostles, but undeniably 
different from that indicated in the Scriptures. 
If they had claimed a " scriptural episcopate," 
it was the easiest thing in the world to say so. 
The case is beyond dispute. The four heads 
of the basis of union offered by the Anglican 
bishops consist of the Scriptures, the scrip- 
tural creeds and sacraments, and the non- 
scriptural episcopate. Had the fourth of these 
heads been propounded in different terms, a 
great barrier to union would have disappeared. 
But the successors of the apostles, apparently 
so ready for compromise on most of the divisive 
questions, remain as firm as Gibraltar in behalf 
of the "historic," as distinguished from the 
" scriptural," episcopate. It would be very dis- 
creditable if the rising generation of Presbyte- 
rians should be ignorant of the posture of the 
church which, more conspicuously than any 
other, advocates organic union. We are ardent 
friends of a true spiritual unity among Chris- 
tians. But the real ought to precede the 
formal, and all our Lord's disciples ought to 
concur upon the first head of the quadrilateral 
as a preliminary step towards the establishment 
of better relations. Why not agree upon the 



108 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

Bible, so far as it can be understood, as our in- 
fallible guide in doctrine, order, and worship ? 
If history is invoked, we have it in the Gospels 
and the Acts, and that inspired history, in the 
plainest language possible, testifies in behalf 
of an episcopate, presbyterial and parochial, 
which all but one of the Kef ormed churches have 
accepted, in principle, if not in practice. 



LETTER XIX. 



Dear : The chief ground on which 

the Anglican body holds itself aloof from our 
common Protestantism is now well known. It 
is an ecclesiastical theory, embracing an un- 
scriptural conception of the pastoral office, 
calling it a priesthood, and an equally unscrip- 
tural conception of the episcopacy, as an order 
above the priest. No possible pretence can be 
offered of a precedent for the scheme in the 
New Testament. The sun does not shine more 
clearly on a bright day than the fact that the 
scriptural pastor of a flock was not a priest but 
a bishop. Knowing this, the Anglican church- 
man holds his theory of priestly and diocesan 
orders "from the time of the apostles," as the 
divinely-appointed hierarchy of the Christian 
church. And sometimes he holds it with a 
devotion more tenacious than that which he 
cherishes for the Bible. The church which he 
serves tamely tolerates in its bosom the teachers 
of many false dogmas, but suffers no deviation 
from its unscriptural postulates on the subject 
of the priesthood and Anglican episcopacy. 
Heretical departures from the faith of Christ 
109 



110 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

are rarely condemned by authority, but no re- 
laxation is allowed in the matter of consecra- 
tion to a hierarchical ministry. 

Here is a zeal, almost frantic in intensity, 
for a system established by human ingenuity, 
without warrant in God's inspired word, whereas 
the zeal of others for the very language of the 
Spirit of God is derided and despised. The 
claim is that the "three orders" have existed 
for ages, and from the days of the apostles con- 
tinuously, and they would have us believe 
that this is equivalent to Scripture. But this 
is the very ground of our complaint. It 
seems to me a monstrous error to assume that 
a revolution, suddenly accomplished in the 
Christian church after the death of the apostles, 
reversing the system they had inaugurated, 
was equally divine with that which preceded it. 
It looks like disrespect to the oracles of God to 
regard the polity recognized by them as a tem- 
porary fabric, designed to be immediately pulled 
down, and substituted by a better system of 
human dictation. Such is the necessary corol- 
lary of the proposition, that a threefold, priestly 
hierarchy sprang into existence at once on the 
ruins of the Presbyterianism prevailing under 
the apostles. A more absurd conceit has rarely 
been entertained by rational men. The gradual 
development of the three orders out of primi- 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. Ill 

tive Presbyterianism is conceivable. But that 
immediately on the death of John the pres- 
byter was called a priest, and the bishop, who 
was a presbyter, all at once became the spirit- 
ual ruler of a province, with kingly jurisdiction 
and divine authority, is a tax on our credulity 
which it cannot bear. What would the in- 
spired New Testament be worth, if common 
history could so easily upset its acknowledged 
facts ? 

There is not one word of unquestionable 
truth in the allegation that there have been 
three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons 
in the Christian church ever since the days of 
the apostles. On the contrary, a sane man, 
free from prepossessions, will know with assur- 
ance that the change was gradually introduced 
by a series of innovations dictated by unin- 
spired counsels. A large wing of the Anglican 
church adopts this view. The "historic epis- 
copate" is a growth, and not an institution of 
the Lord, and is no more worthy of being re- 
garded as a fundamental article of divine au- 
thority than any other product of evolution. 
The authors of the new scheme of organic 
union propound it as equal in dignity and im- 
portance with the Bible and the sacraments. I 
am inclined to the opinion that, in the eyes of 
many, it is the chief corner-stone of the church. 



112 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

It is more inflexibly urged than any dogma 
that comes direct from the words of Christ. 

I hold it to be indefensible in any body of 
Christians to offer terms of union inflexibly 
embracing an article for which they do not 
pretend to find any clear scriptural warrant, 
and in its very nature belonging to the external 
form of Christianity. Here we have before us 
a body of Protestant Christians, forming a 
small minority of the whole, which assumes a 
position altogether different from that of the 
majority, on grounds outside of the Scriptures, 
and repudiated by that majority, and this pecu- 
liar minority positively refuses to recognize the 
validity of the commission on which the ma- 
jority proceeds, holding all its representatives 
as intruders into the ministry of Christ. Centu- 
ries elapse, and still a Mohammedan insulation 
is maintained, and the unity of the Christian 
church bleeds from its severed veins, in conse- 
quence of the unyielding grasp with which the 
Anglican church clings to its illogical and un- 
scriptural illusion. The only parallel is that of 
Islam, whose cruel tenacity to a fanatical faith 
is the nightmare of the world ! 

In every part of the United States the sup- 
porters of this concentrated sectarianism are 
found more or less consciously serving its pur- 
pose. With many, it is a mere acquiescence. 



Letters tc a Young Presbyterian. 113 

As individuals they recognize Jesus Christ in 
his saints of any name. They do not of choice 
estrange themselves from the fellowship he has 
enjoined. There are multitudes of Christ-like 
worshipers at Anglican altars. This hand is 
reluctant to wound one of their hearts. But 
their system is, nevertheless, a fortress built 
upon a principle which requires the overthrow 
of all others. It is a war of extermination, the 
demand being an acceptance by all the other 
denominations of Protestants of the external 
form of the Anglican church. In all our com- 
munities where the system has a foothold, this 
demand is reiterated in the published terms of 
the bishops, union with all evangelical Pro- 
testants who will become Episcopalians ! Many 
churchmen may disapprove of the offer, but it is 
the act of the denomination. And there are 
many in other folds who are very charitable, or 
very indifferent, and withal so uninformed and 
unreflecting, that they may be ready to suc- 
cumb. This is an especial exposure of Presby- 
terians whose associations may be intimate 
with the people of " the church." It may seem 
a small matter to give up. But they do not 
know, perhaps, that a practical acquiescence is 
a shameful retreat from Protestantism half-way 
to the Roman Catholic superstition! The ac- 
ceptance of the Anglican system of church 



114 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

government is an acceptance of the very prin- 
ciple that generated the papacy. That prin- 
ciple was independence of the written oracles 
of God. The first step was to ignore the 
types of Christian institutions in the New 
Testament, and enter the boundless field of 
invention. 



LETTER XX. 



Dear : These letters will certainly be 

credited to Presbyterian bigotry. The wolf is 
ever ready in the fable to attribute the turbid- 
ness of the stream of which he drinks to the 
lamb who is below him. The poor lamb knows 
his own innocence, and the bad spirit of the wolf 
may excite in him some prejudice against his ac- 
cuser; but the lamb can hardly be held respon- 
sible for the foulness of the water above. 
Bigotry is not a Presbyterian offence. We 
have our prejudices, no doubt, and often these 
are too bitter for the Christian heart. But 
bigotry is a rare sentiment in our ranks, and 
some of our members so earnestly disapprove 
of it that they pass over into the Anglican 
communion to give emphasis to their abhor- 
rence! They are so much dissatisfied with the 
fierceness of the lamb that they have concluded 
to consort henceforth with that charitable wolf 
up-stream. I use the fable merely to point the 
moral. The Anglicans are not wolves, and the 
Presbyterians are not lambs, but it is indubi- 
table truth that the sectarian spirit is ten times 
115 



116 Letters to a Young Peesbyterian. 

more intense in the former body than in the 
latter. 

I contend further, that the ^tenacity of the 
Anglicans for their faith in "three orders" is a 
perennial fountain of alienation and bitterness. 
Let us imagine a squadron of American war 
vessels guarding one of our cities against a 
common enemy. One vessel is kept apart by 
its officers, who refuse to recognize the commis- 
sions of the others. The other officers are not 
admitted as such on its decks. The flags they 
have at their mast-heads are treated as spuri- 
ous, and never saluted. A certain courtesy is 
extended to these officers as citizens and gentle- 
men, but they are informed that it is not official. 
In the meantime the authorities at Washington 
recognize no difference, and correspond equally 
with all. "What wonder would there be if the 
officers of the vessels so persistently snubbed 
were somewhat dissatisfied with the situation! 
It would not be unreasonable if they became 
prejudiced towards the party that caused the 
disturbance. One thing, however, must neces- 
sarily ensue : the service would be a great 
losei', the patriotic cause would be dishonored, 
and its substantial interests sacrificed. 

Presbyterians who give encouragement to 
Anglicanism cannot have credit for much devo- 
tion to the cause of Christ. That cause is *'.a- 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 117 

separable from a catholic spirit, which means a 
cordial fellowship with all who love the Lord. 
This is a first principle with us as a church. 
We extend a fraternal hand to all Christian 
bodies that are loyal to the Son of God, our 
Lord. One who renounces Presbyterianism 
and embraces Anglicanism, on a principle, re- 
nounces a catholic communion, and adopts one 
whose catholicity is far less conspicuous. A 
man does not, indeed, necessarily endorse the 
harsher features of the system, but his influ- 
ence is put into the scale in favor of the exclu- 
sive and unscriptural claims on which it rests. 
According to his weight, he becomes respon- 
sible for the public attitude of his denomina- 
tion. 

I hold that indifference to the differences of 
churches is more disreputable than it is in 
politics. It is every man's duty as a patriot to 
sustain the best party. Neutrality, or tergiver- 
sation, is a discreditable thing generally. The 
suspicion of self-interest attaches itself to the 
latter, and that of a dull intellect and insensible 
nature to the former. But in the matter of re- 
ligion it is still worse. The choice of our 
church relations is an act of conscience, and a 
Christian conscience ought to be guided by the 
infallible word of God. If a denomination pro- 
claims itself to be the church of Jesus Christ, 



118 Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 

and that all others are outside, no member of 
another body can enter its fold without pro- 
moting that claim. If it is true according to 
Christ, he does his sacred duty. If it is not 
true, he may be guilty of a sinful error against 
the Lord and his people. 

My protest in these letters is not against 
scriptural convictions. If any Presbyterian 
renounces his principles and adopts the Angli- 
can system as more in accordance with the 
New Testament, I can respect his conduct as 
worthy of a conscientious Christian. But, in 
nine out of ten cases, no such excuse is offered. 
Social influences, and considerations of expedi- 
ency, are almost always the cause of such de- 
fections. The Bible is not consulted. The 
act is performed as if it were a trivial matter, 
of little or no concern to others. The impres- 
sion on the mind is that one church is about 
as good as another, and the party, with heed- 
less inconsistency, proceeds to identify himself 
for life with a church whose corner-stone is the 
opposite principle of exclusiveness. Such an 
act is, of course, a clear case of self-stultifica- 
tion. It is not rare with men otherwise intelli- 
gent. But the painful reflection is its profound 
heartlessness towards the Holy Bible. The 
error of the age is a disregard of the authority 
of inspiration. Many Christians are blind and 



Letters to a Young Presbyterian. 119 

deaf to the greatest of all battles now progress- 
ing between an element in all churches called 
Protestant which disparages and despises the 
written word of God, and another element 
more or less earnest in defending its integrity. 
In this satanic conflict, a few Presbyterians, Bap- 
tists, Methodists, and Congregationalists may 
be found ranged on the side of the assailants. 
The bulk of the hostile force in the English- 
speaking world consists of the Unitarians, the 
Universalists, and a large party in the Angli- 
can communion. What is called Higher Criti- 
cism is the favorite role of many English 
clergymen, and the Broad Church party em- 
braces many of the most conspicuous ration- 
alists of our time. But this party is largely 
reinforced by the High Churchmen and Ritual- 
ists, who practically follow on the same line 
when they appeal to oriental and antiquarian 
usage in behalf of their peculiar institutions, 
and refuse to subject their notions to the test 
of inspired Scripture. The battle is progress- 
ing all along the line. Multitudes do not know 
any more about it than they do of the insur- 
rections in South America. They are in great 
danger of turning up in the Day of Judgment 
on the wrong side of the greatest question ever 
sprung upon Christendom, the question of the 
supreme authority of the inspired and infallible 
word of God. 



